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The 
Advancing Hour 


Norman Hapgood 


Ex-Minister to Denmark 


“They fed not on the advancing hour.” 
GEORGE MEREDITH 


cn J BON! & LIVE ERIGHT fai 


Copyrricut, 1920, By 
BONI & LIVERIGHT, Ine. 


Printed in the United States of Amerioa 


id . Tosi: ue 
THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


CONTENTS 


Intropuction. IN TIME OF REVOLUTION. What kind of person 


is fit to live mn times like these . 


CuHapter I. THE STORM CELLAR. Is America now the home of 


reaction ? °. . . ° . ° e e ° ° e e ° 1 


CuarteR II. THE BLOCKADE OF THOUGHT. How the ordi- 
nary reader is misled by the newspapers and by government state- 
ments ; 


CuapTerR IIT. WHAT THE ISSUES ARE. . te em a 
A. The issue of our duty to other countries. How a parallel 
situation was treated by George Washington. 


B. The issue between the classes. Why the industrial revolution 
cannot be stopped. How it should be guided. 


CuarpterR IV. WITHOUT A PARTY. Why the two big parties in 
America mean nothing. The Bull Moose effort. Third party out- 
look today 


CuarTteR V. FACING BOLSHEVISM: OUR FOLLIES IN 
RUSSIA. What President Wilson called the Acid Test. The 
policy of the Entente seen as a crime 


Cuarter VI. FACING BOLSHEVISM: THE FUTURE IN 
RUSSIA. The relation between the Soviet government and 
the Russian people. The productive forces 


CuapTer VII. IS SOCIALISM NEEDED? What Socialism has 


gained from the world-war and what it has lost 


Cuapter VIII. THE ANSWER OF COOPERATION. A rapidly 
growing movement that works against extreme private capitalism 
by voluntary action, without forcing anybody. The guild move- 
ment. How railroad rates foster monopoly. How they might 
help to diversity and to small units. American beginnings in 


Cooperation, Se 
vii 


13 


39 


69 


87 


128 


153 


168 


Vill CONTENTS 
PAGE 
CuarTerR IX. THE ANSWER OF LIBERALISM. The reforms that 
liberals must bring about soon if socialism is to be avoided. Get- 
ting rid of the proletariat. Continuity of production and the right 
to steady employment. The Drama of Pig Iron. The story of 
panics and howto avoid them. The government’s proper function. 
Our bad system. Insurance. Copartnership between capital and 
labor, American business men. The attitude of lawyers. The Bran- 
deis case and the Supreme Court. A Summary of Liberalism . . * 206 


CuarTreER X. FROM WILSONISM TO THE FUTURE. The 
President’s vision. The littleness of his enemies. The mistake of 
1918. Mexico Sal eciin oA eal Nine enc: Py ke kee oe 


CuarpTeR XI. WHAT IS OUR FAITH? The moral cultural or reli- 
gious changes that must accompany the economic and political 
ehaipes |i Sh Pelee Ayer Ge atl CE Os Ae are Ph 


INTRODUCTION 
IN TIME OF REVOLUTION 


HAT momentous questions greet the 

earnest youth to-day! Was ever a time 

more complex; more heavy with con- 
sequencer 

Not every mind and temper is fit to live through 
such turmoil. ‘The closed mind, the angry temper, 
is amere obstruction. To meet the opportunity are 
needed the brain wide open to the new, the heart 
fresh, without anger or fear. My title comes from 
a verse story by Meredith, in which two good peo- 
ple are destroyed because “they fed not on the 
advancing hours.” Those who are worthy to live 
to-day, in a double revolution (shifting of class 
power and shifting of the nations) are those who 
enter into the time, heartily become part of it, help- 
fully give it welcome. 

This book is an attempt to put forward in con- 
crete form some of the most pressing of the issues. 
Only by an aroused public opinion in the great 
countries can the way out be found. We must be 
stirred from the fixity of our mental habits. The 


leaders of reaction are making a strong fight, not- 
ix 


Xx The Advancing Hour 


ably in America. Such men are often able and 
shrewd, but they are short of, vision. Their vic- 
tories are Pyrrhic. ‘They cause needless resentment 
against our institutions. ‘Those institutions, freely 
adapted to our advancing needs, are sound. Stu- 
pidly administered they will sooner or later be 
upset. If a radical is one who by nature prefers 
sudden change and violent remedies then I am not 
a radical. My conception of the world does differ 
essentially (radically, in short) from the world we 
now live in, but I have no confidence in the ability 
of the human mind, whether Karl Marx’s or an- 
other, to sit down with a pencil and a sheet of paper 
and draw up a world-life. Even gardening is ex- 
perimental, and varies according to species, climate, 
and individual caprice; and man is more complex 
than plants. Moreover it is easier to wreck a com- 
plicated modern machine, like a locomotive or a 
watch, than it is to invent it or improve it. A lib- 
eral differs from a radical in humility. He concen- 
trates on certain changes, good in themselves and 
also carrying the seeds of further change, but he 
leaves later steps to later times. His faith is that 
if the next step taken by us is important and of 
right direction we shall have done all that belongs 
to our moment. 

It is the make-believe liberal, or the coward, who 
is worse than useless, and who gives up leadership, 


In Time of Revolution xl 


in times like these, to the radicals, because his own 
leadership is meaningless. In convulsions, espe- 
cially, we need the courage to look at everything 
and then to act on what we see. The greatest revo- 
lution before the one through which we are now 
living was begun in 1789. It had been raging over 
Europe, with the forces of respectability against it, 
for six years when Charles James Fox said: “It is 
not the law that is to be found in books that consti- 
tutes, that has constituted, the true principle of 
freedom in any country at any time. No, it is the 
energy, the boldness of a man’s mind which prompts 
him to speak not in private, but in large and popu- 
lar assemblies, that constitutes, that creates in a state 
the spirit of freedom. This is the principle that 
gives life to liberty; without it the human character 
is a stranger to freedom.” It was on the verge of 
America’s greatest war that Abraham Lincoln said: 
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the 
people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow 
weary of the existing Government, they can exer- 
cise their constitutional right of amending it, or 
their revolutionary right to dismember or over- 
throw it.” 

Do not such memories make us ashamed to study 
the present discontents otherwise than with the eye 
of candorPe Convulsions test what there is in us. 
Let me quote from one more figure of the past. It 


xi The ‘Advancing Hour 


is Chateaubriand: “Two conditions bring about 
revolutions in empires: when events are too big and 
men too small, or when events are commonplace 
and men beyond the usual moral stature. In the 
first case everything is ruined, in the second every- 
thing is saved.” 

Of what we have been through we may say that 
events were too big and men too small. Of what 
is still to go through we may hope that man will 
arise to his height before it is too late. Mr. Lloyd 
George, speaking at a church gathering, warned his 
hearers that at the end of the war would come a 
moment when things could be accomplished of 
greater permanent importance than the war itself. 
The world just then would be molten. Would 
there be sufficient preparation to take advantage of 
this fluid moment? Soon the world would cool 
down again into hard shapes, and the opportunity 
would be gone. The golden moment did come, but 
it passed. The work of the statesmen at Paris was 
disappointing. But although the most favorable 
moment passed, the settling down of the world has 
been delayed, and opportunities still remain. We 
cannot turn back. We must live into events and 
solve them. Otherwise what is best will perish. 
In fertile change alone is life. 

The publisher believes (no doubt he is right) 
that this introduction should contain an exact state- 


In Time of Revolution — xill 


ment of my position on the Russian problem, since 
it is around that problem that my most recent con- 
troversies have centered. ‘The more elaborate treat- 
ment must be sought in chapters V, VI, VII and 
VIII, but my conclusion on the point most in dis- 
pute, as it faces the world in June, 1920, is this: 

The Bolshevik government is a de facto govern- 
ment. Not the most violent misrepresentation, not 
the most energetic use of the passport control to pre- 
vent knowledge, can any longer cover the fact that 
there is an actual functioning government. ‘That it 
has not been able to conduct industry on communis- 
tic principles is sufficiently pointed out in this book, 
but it does rule the country politically. All efforts 
at overthrow by force have been striking failures. 
_ If Poland or any other country is used as a cat’spaw 
by France, to keep up the military effort, that 
country will pay a heavy penalty. The best thing 
for Russia would be some kind of recognition, how- 
ever limited, of the Soviet government. It is usu- 
ally well to recognize facts. Recognition may be 
hedged about with such reservations as we think 
useful. When the European powers recognized 
the United States we were a country that practiced 
ownership in human beings. ‘The foreign countries 
could have made, if they had thought best, a reser- 
vation on the subject of slavery, but it would have 
been wise for them just the same to recognize that 


xiv The Advancing Hour 


we were a functioning government. ‘Actually they 
were wise to leave slavery to us, as we should be 
wise to leave to Russia the question of communism 
and the question of the present dictatorship. I 
happen myself not to believe in the communism 
which Bolshevik theory represents. What if I 
don’t? Neither do I believe in many of the exag- 
gerations of private capitalism in my own country. 
Coercing Russia is not my affair. 

Trade and intercourse are our only weapons. 
With these we may help the evolution away from 
communism, in so far as that communism proves 
unsound in practice. No government has any 
moral right to limit trade with Russia. Let the in- 
dividual trader alone. Nobody can equal him in 
influence. He may care to risk his money in trade 
with individuals in Russia, as was done even during 
the severest period of the blockade. It is impossi- 
ble to tell whether or not the communists will suc- 
cessfully destroy the codperatives. A foreigner 
may choose to deal directly with the government it- 
self. It is his business; his alone. Personally I 
shall be glad of every trade that is made—private, 
cooperative, or governmental. Every trade in Rus- 
sia, no matter with whom, will do two things. 
First, it will help to build up Russia and hence the 
central powers and the world. Second, it will tend 
to force the government (if a Socialist government 


In Time of Revolution XV 


continues to hold power) further and further 
toward the right, toward greater concessions to pri- 
vate independence. Many people know that these 
views were held to be a grave fault in men in the 
fall of 1919. 

The question of recognition has become a serious 
one only since the Bolshevik victories of last fall. 
There was no reason to recognize the Soviet govern- 
ment while the control of Russia was in real dispute, 
and it was only the folly of supporting Kolchak, 
Denikin and Yudenich that made it impossible to 
have a clear and justifiable position. Either we 
should have given friendly although informal rec- 
ognition to each government in its own region of 
control or we should have given no support or rec- 
ognition to any. The arguments against recognition 
of the Soviet government after its complete victory 
are expressed by the National Civic Federation in a 
statement published March 29th, 1920, and this 
statement may be taken, I think, as representing the 
understandable horror of recognizing a govern- 
ment representing ideas of which they disapprove. 
The statement says: 


“We believe that recognition of Soviet Russia 
would be a repudiation of all that our national life 
has represented for a hundred and fifty years, and 
of all the spiritual ideals for which modern civiliza- 
tion has striven for two thousand years.” 


Xvi The Advancing Hour 


Is there any reason why that statement should not 
have been printed one hundred and twenty-five 
years ago about the French revolutionr As the 
names signed to the protest are some of the most 
distinguished in America it is worth while to 
notice the reasoning. It is the kind of reasoning 
which does most to justify distrust of any league of 
nations as tending to be a Holy Alliance, and my 
intense hope in a league of nations is one of the 
causes that make me regret so bitterly our bourbon- 
ism about Russia. This statement speaks of the 
Soviet government as “‘aiming to destroy the bul- 
warks of morality and social order.” It endeavors 
to destroy the bulwarks of one morality and of one 
social order. Shall we prevent the endeavorr 
Shall there never be a change in morality and social 
orderr The statement says that Soviet tenets 
“made marriage a mere civil contract which may 
be broken by either party.” The language is 
wholly unfair to the Soviet marriage law, but those 
who signed the statement might well ask themselves 
whether the world to-day is purified by pretending 
that marriage is a religious sacrament rather than 
an important civic status. “Its system and fran- 
chise destroy representative government.” Have 
the signers ever read the franchise systemr Or are 
they confusedly mixing up the system with the Bol- 
shevik war-dictatorship? ‘Soviet tenets attempted 


In Time of Revolution XVli 


to interdict the teaching of religion.” This is an 
over-simplified, propaganda statement, but it is true 
that the Bolsheviks endeavored to break down the 
hold of a church closely linked with the old régime 
in Russia. Is that our affair? The National Civic 
Federation becomes merely funny when it speaks of 
the danger of “an endless stream of inspired press 
stories from Moscow and Petrograd.” Are the 
signers children to believe that the Soviet side of 
the argument has had more hospitable space in our 
newspapers and news agencies than the anti-Soviet 
sider Are the wealthy gentlemen who own our 
leading papers in a conspiracy to print only the 
Soviet side? ? 

The silliness of such implications, the fright of 
them, is filled with danger. To suppose that we, 
thousands of miles away, drugged with war-propa- 
ganda, are to accept or reject foreign governments 
on such grounds as these, is to kill the possibility of 
international codperation among liberals. 

A few articles, made out of material in this book, 
have been published in the New Republic, Asia, 
and the Independent, but the greater part of the 
book is now published for the first time. 

- N. H. 
New York, June, 1920. 


1QOn the morning of Feb. 28th, 1920, when I opened the leading 
American newspaper, I had a typical experience. Mr. Walter Lipp- 


XViii The Advancing Hour 


mann had exactly the same experience, for in a speech that same 
afternoon he said: 

“T wish to take one example to illustrate what I have been saying 
as to the relation between censorship and propaganda. I take it from 
this morning’s newspaper, the New York Times. In Europe, great 
events are occurring and the British Empire is leading a movement 
towards peace with Russia. As part of that movement, a peace 
offer has been made to the United States government by the Russian 
government. The New York Times this morning states that off- 
cials at Washington said it did not differ from previous proposals 
and that it would not be made public, as it was regarded largely as 
an effort to further the Soviet propaganda throughout the world. 

There is the censorship—the absolute denial that the American 
people have a right to know the terms of a peace offer made to 
their government by another government. 

Immediately following that news item is another item headed, 
“Lenine’s new plan for world revolution.” ‘The date line is Berlin. 
It states that a Russian emissary, who is traveling through Germany 
to-day incognito, is believed to be one of the big guns of the Soviet 
movement. His real name is known only to trusted Communist 
leaders. On Tuesday evening he spoke at a secret meeting of the 
chieftains of Communism, to which also some independent Socialists 
were invited, and what this gentleman said on Tuesday evening is 
reported in quotes, verbatim, in this morning’s Times. 

Out of that soil, that soil of blockaded news and advertised fic- 
tion, have grown groups of people who have conducted the red 
hysteria. Moderate people, people with a sense of evidence, people 
who seek the truth about things they talk about, faced with that kind 
of thing, have been unable to take a position, to make up their minds. 
But that has not deterred a lot of other people from making up 
their minds. Some of these people are inspired by sinister motives. 
Some are partly hysterical, but those who are most interested are 
those who are fanatically self-righteous. There are people in this 
country to-day who believe that they are chosen by God or by the 
Union League Club to save this country from contamination.” 

The National Civic Federation might give an evening to debating 
this opinion of Robert Louis Stevenson: 

“It is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, 
a dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of knowledge, 
and rouse our drowsy consciences. Something that seems quite new, 
or that seems insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a 
reader. If he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he 
has the gift, and let him read. If he is merely hurt or offended, 
or exclaims upon his author’s folly, he had better take to the daily 
papers; he will never be a reader.” 


» 


In Time of Revolution X1X 


I do not know to what extent I agree or disagree with Thomas 
Jefferson when he said, “I believe that a revolution every once in a 
while is a good thing.” What I do know is that it would have 
been a pity if Mr. Jefferson had not been allowed to say it. Zach- 
ariah R. Chaffee, Jr., Professor of Law in Harvard University, 
observes that “the Declaration of Independence advocates the over- 
throw of any government by force or violence which is destructive 
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and in the same 
speech he said: “In a country where John Adams defended the 
British soldiers involved in the Boston massacre, and Alexander 
Hamilton represented British Loyalists, and General Grant favored 
the release of Jefferson Davis, it is surprising how generally men 
assume that any one who urges fair treatment for conscientious 
objectors must be a conscientious objector and any one who believes 
that the treaty with Germany should not violate the armistice must 
be a pro-German. It has been impossible for any one to uphold the 
rights of a minority without subjecting himself to the accusation that 
he shared their views. 


I plead for free speech, not in the name of radicalism but in the 
name of conservatism. At the time of the French Revolution, those 
who wielded the guillotine overlooked the fact that it came nearer 
to them with every successive batch of prisoners who were brought 
under it until at last the most extreme members of society went 
under the knife. When we see the fate of the Federalist Party in 
this country, which was a very strong majority, the party which 
introduced the Sedition Act of 1798; when we see the fate of the 
Liberal Party in England, which passed the Defense of the Realm 
Act, and see the small minority they have become, who can say that 
any one of the two great parties in this country may not in a few 
years become a small minority? In a part of Wisconsin, one of 
these parties has already fallen to third place. In North Dakota, 
one has been captured by the extreme radical group. If we allow 
this principle of suppression to prevail in this country, we cannot 
be sure that it will not be used before many years against the con- 
servatives. I ask for the stopping of this principle as a conservative, 
so that minorities shall be entitled to some rights.” 


The Advancing Hour 


hy i Won 
ARC 


A 
(a 


THE ADVANCING HOUR 


CHAPTER I 
THE STORM CELLAR 


“Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall 
follow truth too near the heels, 1t may haply strike 
out his teeth,” Sir Walter Raleigh. 


HE qyury which found men guilty for pub- 

lishing news items or editorials like those 
here in question must have supposed it to 

be within their province to condemn men not 
merely for disloyal acts but for a disloyal heart; 
provided only that the disloyal heart was evidenced 
by some utterance. To prosecute men for such 
publications reminds of the days when men were 
hanged for constructive treason. And, indeed, the 
jury may well have believed from the charge that 
the Espionage Act had in effect restored the crime 
of constructive treason. To hold that such harm- 
less additions to or omissions from news items, and 
such impotent expressions of editorial opinion, as 
were shown here, can afford the basis even of a 


prosecution will doubtless discourage criticism of 
1 


2 The Advancing Hour 


the policies of the Government. To hold that such 
publications can be suppressed as false reports sub- 
jects to new perils the constitutional liberty of the 
press, already seriously curtailed in practice under 
powers assumed to have been conferred upon the 
postal authorities. Nor will this grave danger end 
with the passing of the war. The constitutional 
right of free speech has been declared to be the 
same in peace and in war. In peace, too, men may 
differ widely as to what loyalty to our country de- 
mands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by pas- 
sion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has 
often been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions 
with which it disagrees. Convictions such as these, 
besides abridging freedom of speech, threaten free- 
dom of thought and of belief.” 

Mr. Justice Brandeis dissenting (with Mr. Jus- 
tice Holmes) in Schaefer et al. vs. the U. S. 


When in 1917 I first read the generalization 
about history, that in a war the belligerents are 
likely to exchange national characteristics, I was 
faintly interested. Just now my interest is grave. 
My own country has been illustrating dramatically 
the bad end of the exchange. Germany and Russia, 
shedding their old despotisms, have a strong proba- 
bility of settling into interesting democracies. 
England, not much injured mentally by the war, is 


The Storm Cellar 3 


leading the world in preparing for industrial de- 
mocracy, as she has so long led the larger nations in 
political democracy. France is less free in mind 
than before the war, but even in France the change 
is slight compared to ours. The United States in 
six years, mainly in three years, passed into a 
despotic spirit comparable only to what Russia and 
Prussia were before 1914. ‘There are signs of im- 
provement, but there is every need of frankness and 
determination. 

I know that for the fear, cruelty and vagueness 
that have oppressed our country the reasons are ex- 
cellent. Our repressiveness is based on danger to 
the republic; on plots turned up by the police; on 
potential revolution; on the need of law and order; 
on patriotism. It is based on exactly the reasons 
always put forward by the German and Russian 
oligarchies. The excuse behind the reasoning, 
however, is slimmer than in either of the foreign 
despotisms. The Czar actually was in constant 
physical peril. Every step ahead was a peril. A 
Russian princess said to me: “Our first mistake 
was when we freed the serfs. Since then the peas- 
ants have been always thinking they could get 
more.” ‘The Kaiser and his shining ones faced not 
only the vengeance of France, the mysterious possi- 
bilities of Russia, the far-seeing menace of England, 
but they dealt with a growth in socialism that was 


4, The Advancing Hour 


rapid and in their minds degenerate. We are a 
nation with natural resources undiminished; pro- 
tected by the oceans; with centuries of British free 
tradition behind us; with all our hundred millions, 
except the merest fraction, accepting our general 
form of government; and yet we have recently gone 
far in abandoning the grand old Anglo-American 
traditions and taking over those of the Czars and 
Kaisers. 

Nor is that the worst. England from time to 
time has gone through panics of thought-control, 
but always there have been men of eminence to rise 
and defy the frightened animal, and such men have 
kept the country’s spirit great. On my return to 
America from Denmark in December, 1919, what 
struck me was the silence of such liberal leaders as 
remain. A few editors, a few clergymen kept their 
nerve. <A few politicians and lawyers have spoken 
since then, although most of them without full in- 
dignation; and how many, alas, whom we had 
counted liberal have found one excuse and another 
for joining the pack and crying down the trail! 

There are many forms of courage, of which we 
may distinguish three. That the physical form is 
highly developed in all modern nations, recent most 
heroic endurances have proved. If moral courage 
means the willingness to brave penalties in defense 
of simple moral convictions, that species is not so 


The Storm Cellar 5 


rare as intellectual courage, or willingness to make 
sacrifices for our own thought-out intellectual be- 
liefs. In America this intellectual courage has 
shown itself in those realms in which we are inter- 
ested. Many a business man has put his own lonely 
thought into execution. But mental independence 
has been singularly lacking in the general realms of 
thought, because for a long time we have not been 
interested in thought. In the present crisis, if we 
had possessed any seriousness about the bases of lib- 
erty, our leaders could not have been divided into 
those who helped to stampede the country into a 
pitiful Prussianism and those who acquiesced in the 
stampede. 

I would not overstate the case, and therefore it 
should be added that many individuals have been 
kept silent not from cowardice, but from a sense of 
futility that is so often felt in American life by 
minorities. These persons feel that they have no 
power to lead the many out of their mania and that 
the public will of itself emerge when in the infini- 
tude of God’s wisdom the time is ripe. I wish to 
state their case fairly, and Ironquill has done it for 
them: 

“Once a Kansas zephyr strayed 
Where a brass-eyed bird-pup played. 
And that canine bayed 

At that zephyr, in a gay 
Semi-idiotic way. 


6 The ‘Advancing Hour 


Then that zephyr, in about 

Half a jiffy, took that pup, 

Tipped him over, wrong side up, 
Then it turned him wrong side out. 


And it calmly journeyed thence, 
With a barn and string of fence.” 


The moral drawn by Ironquill is exactly that of 
the public at the present moment: 


“When communities turn loose 
Social forces that produce 
The disorders of a gale, 

‘Act upon the well known law: 
Face the breeze but close your jaw. 
It’s a rule that will not fail. 

If you bay it in a gay, 
Self-sufficient sort of way, 

It will land you without doubt 
Upside down and wrong side out.” 


Many of my friends who are not cowards have 
stayed in the storm cellar, not primarily because 
they found it safe, but because they felt that protest 
on their part would accomplish nothing and would 
further infuriate the public beast. We went 
through a similar stage in the war against Germany, 
although the temper, in ferocity, never equalled 
this, partly because nothing is so alarming as a 
threat against a bank account; more, perhaps, be- 
cause the German danger was thousands of miles 


The Storm Cellar iy 


away. In this case, on the contrary, our politicians 
and our newspapers have vied with one another in 
depicting the peril as crimson and as on our door- 
steps. The enemy is at the gate; inside the gate; his 
machinations are the subject of proclamation after 
proclamation; patriotic addresses follow fast; and 
scareheads know no end. I myself have no love of 
the storm cellar, but if I allowed myself a diet ex- 
clusively on American newspapers, I imagine I 
might succumb to discouragement and seek stand- 
ardized peace. 

[ago tells of a passion “That doth make the meat 
it feeds on.” ‘The tragedy of all others in this snarl 
is that our fears create the realities. First we have 
a fit, in which we see Lenin in every strike, Trotski 
on every soap box, a wrecked civilization in every 
reform. As a result of this delirium we pass laws 
that combine inquisition with punishment for mere 
opinion. We deport a man without a trial because 
one inquisitor has reached the conclusion that this 
man calls himself an anarchist; that he disbelieves 
in force as a method of bringing about the world 
he dreams of; but that he looks forward to a remote 
future in which man will be so changed that there 
will not be even governmental force. We start a 
series of political booms, including booms for the 
Presidency, based on this passion; each candidate 
wishes to discover more Reds than any other candi- 


8 The ‘Advancing Hour 


date and to make more noise about it; prosecuting 
attorneys, legislators and judges sing epileptic pa- 
triotism; and George Bernard Shaw is justified in 
wondering why anybody stays in America with a 
free country only seven days away. Unhappy re- 
sults are inevitable. ‘The discontented labor ele- 
ments become hopeless. This semi-legal lynching, 
this violent direct action by the predominant classes, 
inevitably removes whatever lingering respect may 
still exist for law and for established custom, and 
we see an increasing tendency towards sporadic vio- 
lence and silly paper plots; so that we create what 
at first was the fright of a dream. ‘Thus the propa- 
ganda of six years, first against Germans, then 
against communists, in taking away intelligence 
from the public becomes the cause of that kind of 
violence that is easy to see and to condemn. The 
silent acceptance of this drugging by our responsi- 
ble men creates a condition where they have more 
reason to be afraid of defending our traditional 
legal and political safeguards, because at any mo- 
ment a Red idiot or collection of idiots may blow 
something up. 

The situation being so unpromising how can we 
ask our trained citizen to lift his voice? Shall he 
endanger his money-earning power, the peace of 
his relatives, his own good name in a contest so un- 
promising? Is it not useless, suicidal, to be openly 


The Storm Cellar 9 


rational about industrial contests in the present 
times? I look back over my personal experiences 
in these recent years with some sadness and with 
some amusement. In the fail of 1914 I was losing 
readers and credit by criticizing Germany. In 
1917 I was branded as a defeatist for favoring the 
Stockholm Conference and for believing that a de- 
feat of Germany, not carried too far, would leave 
her less dangerous than she would be if crushed, 
humiliated and demoralized. In 1918 I questioned 
some of the German atrocities, because I feared the 
remote results of our extravagant propaganda, and 
one earnest patriot who heard me speak in Roches- 
ter reported my speech to the Secret Service and I 
have no doubt it is in Senator Lodge’s dossier 
against me. Some other patriot sent in the equally 
damaging opinion that I annoyed the French gov- 
ernment in 1917 by writing that the French peasant 
then desired a settlement by universal understand- 
ing rather than by force. One becomes a stage vil- 
lain easily when the public is crazy. In 1919 the 
mania modified its form and because I believed 
Bolshevism could be ended only by peace, prosper- 
ity and contact, there were plenty of people to be- 
lieve the charge fomented by Lodge, that I was an 
employee of the Moscow government. Before at- 
tempting to say why I think there is an obligation 
on the powerful, a noblesse oblige to stand out 


10 The Advancing Hour 


against the mob’s blood-lust that the leaders have 
created, I ought in candor to admit that my own 
reason for refusing to be reduced to subjection is 
much less ethical than it is mere unwillingness to 
be bored. A life spent in sharing these successive 
spasms might be full of material comfort and of the 
prestige of being proper, but it would be an ennui 
so intense that more patience than mine would be 
required to manage the daily dullness.) My sym- 
pathy is absolute, however, for two classes of the 
acquiescent. One class is composed of those who 
are so placed that if they do not conform they will 
see their families in genuine distress. ‘The other is 
composed of those who have read our newspapers 
and drunk the propaganda for years with no facili- 
ties for getting at facts, so that they have come to 
see all the devils and dangers they are told to see, 
like a child reading Red Riding Hood. It is to 
neither of these classes that I appeal, but to men 
who have not lost the power to think and who also 
are so placed that they might be honest without los- 
ing the ability to feed and educate their young. 
For such men there is no cause to which they 
could dedicate themselves so worthily as the cause 
of seeking roads away from Prussianism. Great 
nations did not fight this war to make the world 
safe for conformity. Conformity means many ad- 
vantages, but when Thomas Jefferson wrote his own 


The Store Oslin. W 


epitaph he disdained to put on it any external hon- 
ors. He did not mention that he had been Secre- 
tary of State, Vice President or President of the 
United States. He told only that he had written 
two documents in favor of human liberty and had 
founded an institution for the higher learning. 
When Daniel Webster picked out the thing that 
above all others he would leave to his posterity it 
was a spirit to be remembered now. He is speak- 
ing of the right of full and free discussion. He 
says: “It is not to be drawn into controversy. It 
is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air and 
walking on the earth. Belonging to private life as 
a right, it belongs to public life as a duty. This 
high constitutional privilege I shall defend and ex- 
ercise in all places in time of war, in time of peace, 
and at all times. Living, I will assert it; dying, I 
will assert it; and should I leave no other inheri- 
tance to my children I will leave them the inheri- 
tance of free principles and the example of a manly, 
independent and constitutional defense of them.” 
I wish I could remember who it was that warned 
the House of Commons against taking from the rat- 
tlesnake the rattle by which he gives warning of his 
approach, and leaving the sting with which he kills. 
In suppressing opinion we take away the rattle. 
In failing to put into practice new institutions 
needed by the time we leave the sting. I inquire 


12 The Advancing Hour 


only if a man has fighting blood in that part of him 
which dwells among ideas. If so, shall he not give 
battle for those conceptions of freedom handed 
down to us in the noble English tradition and car- 
ried along by the great names in our own history? 
Let us remember how Washington stood against a 
public propagandized by seven years of war when 
he refused to take sides in a later dispute between 
England and France; how Lincoln was one of only 
two men to vote right in the Illinois legislature on a 
bill that touched the most impassioned issue of that 
day. Is there among us in America none of that 
pride that makes famous Englishmen dissent from 
the enraged majority no matter how hot the issue? 
In a time like this to be free means for a while to 
be misunderstood. Why note Is the intellectual 
life to be all flabby, with no rugged stretches? Is 
hardihood to exist only in the body? Let us hear 
the drum music of our own convictions. The ulti- 
mate call just now is to spirit. What can a man do 
better than to refuse to sell his integrity for a mean 
quiescencer 


a i — 


CHAPTER IIT 
THE BLOCKADE OF THOUGHT 


“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on 
earth,” Bertrand Russell. 


“In a democracy, institutions are worth no more 
than the public opinion that controls them.” 
Montesquieu. 


5 I do not believe we can face, purely and 
without fear, the new world, until we real- 
ize how false are many of the premises on 
which we base our decisions, I ask the reader 
to go with me through certain personal experiences 
in the gathering of facts. I shall not guess, but tell 
only what I individually know. A large per- 
centage of average men and women desire the truth, 
and would be willing to follow it, but if a 
trained journalist, with access to sources of inside 
information, has to be on his guard constantly 
against misleading data, what chance has the aver- 
age reader? 
It happened that when the war broke out, in 1914, 
I was in England; and what, in my memory, re- 


mains most vivid, is a little group of men at the 
13 


14 The Advancing Hour 


Liberal Club, the night before it became entirely 
certain that England would enter. These men 
were students of social welfare. They were fa- 
miliar with diplomatic history. They were among 
the self-contained, whom it is difficult to stampede. 
It is the sadness of their manners that I remember. 
They knew how destructive is modern war to mor- 
als and to intellect. ‘There was no need to join in 
denouncing Germany. Others would fully accom- 
plish that. ‘These men dwelt rather on the con- 
tributions of Germany; on the close votes by which 
for years the Socialists had failed to shake the 
despotic system; on the difficulties put in the way 
of reform by the Anglo-Russian-French entente; on 
the rising standard of living for German workmen, 
despite poor soil, scant waterways, inability to en- 
joy the proceeds of African and Asiatic labor, as 
British workmen can. We recalled the Moroccan 
history as a breach of faith on the part of France 
at Germany’s expense, and we trusted neither side 
to make good use of victory. We heard of resig- 
nations from the British cabinet, some by men who 
believed England should not enter, some by men 
who, passing no judgment, were unwilling to take 
part in the endless falsities of war. For my part I 
felt on that night certain truths that I have felt until 
now. ‘These principles are sufficiently unpopular 
to free me from suspicion of boasting. They were 


The Blockade of Thought 15 


written almost unbrokenly, week by week, in the 
press; so that I cannot be accused of wisdom after 
the fact. Some of the guiding points, as they stood 
out in August, 1914, were these: 

(1) The German enterprise of domination must 
be stopped. As I expect for some years to be com- 
batting the effects of the propaganda that Germans 
(or Russians) are Huns, I rejoice in the frequency 
with which my name appeared on the special black- 
list of the Staats-Zeitung and the Fatherland, the 
Fatherland going so far as to credit me with deriv- 
ing from “a respectable Jewish family by the name 
of Habgut.” 

(2) Disillusion for Germany, absence of victory, 
would be a better cure for Prussianism than would 
an overwhelming victory for the Entente. [ ar- 
dently favored the Stockholm Conference. I 
agreed with Lord Lansdowne about the conse- 
quences of “the knockout blow.” I believed in a 
carefully determined plebiscite, even in Alsace- 
Lorraine, said so, and thereby got into disfavor. 
Later on I did not like the language used in the 
fourteen points about the size of the new Poland, a 
view that proved particularly unpopular, as ex- 
pressed by me in the press. Realizing Wilson’s 
endless difficulties, and the majestic triumphs that 
with better support might have been his, I believe 
his thought was truest and also most expressive of 


16 The Advancing Hour 


himself when he stood for his carefully considered 
expression “peace without victory.” In short, I was 
a “‘defeatist.” In 1917 I expressed to one of Eng- 
land’s most eminent men of letters the view that a 
defeat of Germany would cure her more effectually 
than a crushing, whereupon he burst into a rage so 
distressing that I retreated. “Oh,” he cried, “‘you 
are very careful about what is for the welfare of 
Germany! What about usP What about the sons 
We Tavenlostre hy Natiisenssn cui, 

(3) Next, in this list of principles held in 1914, 
and held now, was that for a man to change his 
Opinions as soon as he is compelled to take his stand 
in war, is shameful. Be it said of these intellectual 
Englishmen of August, 1914, they have not shed 
their convictions. Although none of them were 
young, some went into the war, and nevertheless 
remained just. ‘They could even fight without tak- 
ing the opium of falsehood. Sir John Simon, a 
leader among the forces of reason, in the dark days 
of the spring of 1917, said that as a moment had 
come when only physical force could resist Ger- 
many’s conquest he felt driven to resign his seat in 
the House of Commons and, in spite of his age and 
habits of life, to ask to be assigned to the army. An- 
other member of the House of Commons, Josiah 
Wedgwood, international and universal in his sym- 
pathies, a bold dissenter always against popular 


The Blockatle of Thought 17 


folly, now a grandfather, volunteered immediately, 
fought in Antwerp, fought in a tank in Flanders, 
was badly wounded at Gallipoli, was sent by Mr. 
Balfour to see Lenin and report on the situation, was 
recalled from Vladivostok because his advice ca- 
bled from there was contrary to the fixed inten- 
tions of the Government, went smilingly back to 
his seat in the House to make trouble for the smug, 
and finally, wearying of the cowardice of liberalism, 
joined the labor party, becoming particularly active 
in the parliamentary fight against the hypocritical, 
greedy, and ignorant interference in Russia. Of 
such men is derived the glory of the British charac- 
ter. Of General Smuts I need not speak. I will 
but tell one thing not known: that in 1917 he said 
to Lord Milner: “In the South African war you 
kept us fighting a year longer than was necessary, 
because we did not know your terms. Don’t make 
the same mistake on a larger scale with Germany.” 

No doubt those Englishmen who, like Ramsay 
MacDonald, in 1914 opposed the entry of England 
into the war, paid a price in public standing, and 
I think their judgment was inferior to that of Smuts 
and Cecil; but truth is multiform, and they were a 
thousand times less wrong, and more courageous, 
than the Northcliffes, Churchills and Morning 
Posts, who have poisoned the victory. The type 
that is beyond criticism, a beacon for moral war, is 


18 The Advancing Hour 


the type that in August of 1914 saw the need of 
fighting, but in 1919 equally saw the need of for- 
giving; that took part in the resistance, and fol- 
lowed it with that great adventure, faith. 

When I left England, the German armies were 
approaching Liége and Namur. The ship on 
which I crossed carried many German-Americans. 
Their talk about the war was friendly, but full of 
error. They knew enough not to imagine, as we 
imagined then, that the Belgian forts might hold; 
but in their lurid confidence they believed London 
would be unsafe within a month. They talked, with 
eloquence, of the power of discipline; they had no 
conception of the dangers of overtraining. When 
I reached America, I found my countrymen almost 
completely ignorant, but bettér oriented in their 
ignorance than they became in the days of the 
American Defense Society and the Sisson docu- 
ments. 

In 1915 I went back again to England, Ireland, 
and France. In Queenstown I looked over the 
faces of the Lusitania’s dead, seeking one of my 
dearest friends, but in the horror of it I could see 
no reason for plunging deeper into hatred. In 
France I speedily learned to take less interest in 
the facile stories of German propaganda and more 
interest in the methods of propaganda that I saw 
immediately in front of me. For example: once I 


The Blockade of Thought 19 


was on a certain hill in France when a few scattered 
shots led us to go to a village the commander of 
which had not been warned that any correspondents 
were coming. The Captain in charge of us showed 
us that practically the only damage done to the town 
had been done to the hospital and its immediate 
vicinity. As I always try to do, when seeking news, 
I got away from my keepers and wandered about 
alone. By good luck I met the French officer com- 
manding the town. “Tell me,” I inquired, ‘“‘is it 
true that the Germans shot up the hospital on pur- 
poser” “Certainly,” he replied. ‘Why not? We 
had a battery behind it.’ Which was not in the 
propaganda arrangements. 

Mr. L. is an extremely intimate friend of mine, 
and a most exact reporter. The following fact I 
have from him. He was abroad on official business, 
when the Captain of a British destroyer told him 
that a submarine had surrendered to his ship. He 
had the crew come on his ship, and then: “I ordered 
them to be taken below and thrown one by one into 
the furnace,” he said. 

We had been talking, my friend and I, of the ac- 
cepted rule, in gathering evidence of German atroci- 
ties, that you can take as true what a man says 
against his army or himself. Of course, neither of 
us believed this British Captain. He was making a 
sensation, as a large minority of men do who have 


20 The Advancing Hour 


been in exciting situations. Most people are like 
the correspondent of an American newspaper, with 
whom I spent several days, when conditions hap- 
pened to be distressingly quiet, so that it was a sub- 
ject for jokes. As always, however, our automobile 
had to go fast when it was within reach of the Ger- 
man guns. This was the only fact the correspondent 
had to goon. We rode back to Paris together. The 
nearer we got to the city the more useful my com- 
panion’s memory became. Before we arrived he 
declared that in all his war experiences he had not 
had quite the sense of peril he had known that week; 
and the readers of his newspaper got the benefit of 
his intensity. Even in ordinary times those who 
seek the truth are few, the majority welcoming alle- 
gations that fortify them in their desires. 

I went back to France in 1917. Nobody doubts 
that Monsieur Clemenceau, an extraordinarily able 
individual, had much to do not only with winning 
the war but also with the extremely different work 
of deciding what kind of a moral universe was to be 
handed to us to live in as a result of the victory. 
I never saw the Tiger but once. It happened thus: 

There were in France, in 1917, a number of jour- 
nalists who were wearied and ashamed of the news 
that went from Europe to the United States. They 
formed an organization for two purposes: (1) To 
try to induce American newspapers to send more 


The Blockade of Thought 21 


serious correspondents abroad. (2) To endeavor, 
once the quality of the correspondents was im- 
proved, to take all possible steps to weaken the 
blockade against thought, and to acquire permission 
from the French and American censorships to send, 
not stereotyped and standardized propaganda, but 
the natural variety of views from the standpoint of 
a group of responsible observers. These men in- 
cluded such writers as John Bass, Will Irwin, and 
Herbert Corey. They sympathized with the censor- 
ship when it was merely endeavoring to stop sensa- 
tional and improper news “beats” or “‘scare stories,” 
which a correspondent with a due sense of his obli- 
gations would not endeavor to send anyway, and 
many of them were frankly ashamed of the kind of 
men representing many conspicuous newspapers, 
although not less ashamed of the anesthetic nature 
of the news conveyed by all propaganda depart- 
ments including our own. 

I was made President of this organization and as 
my first duty told to see M. Clemenceau, who had 
just become Premier, and deliver an address and a 
request. I was instructed to describe the make-up 
of the organization and its spirit, and to add that 
the men composing it had every reason to congratu- 
late themselves, as journalists, on the advent of M. 
Clemenceau, since his campaign against his prede- 
cessors in power had been largely an attack on the 


22 The Advancing Hour 


censorship. ‘The newspapers had practically all 
said that M. Clemenceau intended to put an imme- 
diate end to the political side of the censorship. 
I therefore turned up in his office. He was seventy- 
five at the time. He came across the floor, looking 
like a hearty man of sixty and walking like an active 
man of forty, and then sat back at his desk to listen. 
I made my speech. The explanatory and polite 
introduction went smoothly. When I came to the 
expectation that the political censorship would be 
removed or seriously modified he broke in: “Every- 
thing will be as before. There will be no change 
whatever. Why should there be?” 

I recited the announcements in the newspapers: 
“Well,” he said, “you are a newspaper man your- 
self. You know how to take such things,” 

All my answer was there, in the change from the 
man out of power to the man in power, but as I had 
completely failed in the definite object of my mis- 
sion, I thought I might at least obtain a banality 
for our organization and the public, so I said: 

“T am sorry we misunderstood your position. We 
are anxious to say something to the United States 
about your attitude toward printing the truth. May 
I say at least that you agree that a self-governing 
nation will fight better if it is allowed to know the 
essential facts than if it is kept in ignoranceP” 

“Yes,” he said. ‘You may say that,” and with 


The Blockade of Thought 23 


the harmless cargo of a generalization, expressed in 
words not to be acted on, I returned to report. 

A little while later M. Clemenceau gave to the 
Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian a 
few hours in which to pack his things and get out 
of France. No reason was given, but his persistent 
publication of inside information about treaties and 
negotiations was generally accepted as the reason. 
M. Clemenceau was by no means alone in thinking 
that the Guardian should be as far as possible inter- 
fered with in its mission of telling the truth in a 
large and instructive way. That paper is never sen- 
sational, never unpatriotic, never indiscreet. It 
represents the liberal mind in a form that would 
enable liberalism to live, by meeting the problems 
of the present age. It is the one daily paper that 
I cannot do without, in whatever country I may be, 
partly on account of its sound and illuminating 
opinions but even more on account of its news, 
which far outweighs in significance the news in any 
other paper. I emphasize all this because, in order 
to mark the degree to which mental freedom is dis- 
tasteful to the war-and-power mind, it is important 
to distinguish between extreme radicalism and sane 
liberalism. If Clemenceau had merely held down 
peace-at-any-price, internationalist-minded publica- 
tions, it would have been a different story. If the 
British Government, the most liberal of all fighting 


24 The Advancing Hour 


governments, had merely forbidden the foreign cir- 
culation, during the war, of publications like the 
Nation and the Cambridge Magazine, and im- 
prisoned men as uncompromisingly profound and 
honest as Bertrand Russell, it would have been an- 
other exercise of power, that might pethaps have 
been justified on the ground of reasonable coher- 
ence in a crisis; but the issue shifts when we see, 
after the war, the British secretly instigating the 
FEsthonians to imprison an academically-trained cor- 
respondent of the Guardian, because he came from 
Soviet Russia and might tell something; or when 
we see Mr. Lloyd George putting out an official 
denial that he ever heard of Mr. Bullitt. “There is 
no mounting to power,” said Bacon, “except by 
crooked stairs.” Much of the falsity of govern- 
ments during and immediately after the war is due 
to fear, but much also to the lust for personal power. 

Once, talking to a foreign statesman, I said that 
the Guardian seemed to me to show what journalism 
ought to be. 

“But do you find that it represents British opin- 
ion?” he asked. 

“Tt represents the permanently best in British 
opinion,” I replied. ‘From other publications I 
can get the fleeting mob-mind. The more impor- 
tant thing is to get from a newspaper the facts as 
truthfully as may be.” 


The Blockade of Thought 25 


As England is politically the freest great power 
in the world, I will recall.a few other examples of 
the shamelessness with which truth is put aside in 
war-time, whether by the government, the press, or 
the public. 

David Lloyd George has done much, very much, 
for liberalism and human freedom, yet what will 
history say of the ruthless mendacity with which he 
handled the issue of Kerenski and the Stockholm 
conference? ‘Then the future of the world was at 
stake, but the truth could not be trusted. It was not 
enough to refuse to allow laboring men to meet and 
consider. It was necessary to falsify the wishes of 
Kerenski. The British Government was very gen- 
tle with the Czar. I happened to be at the British 
front in France when the first Russian revolution 
broke, in March, 1917. It was natural that officers 
should be alarmed by a great political change in 
war-time. It was only when I got back to England 
that I began to be discouraged by having it borne 
in on me that the will to get on top of the antagonist 
was more deeply rooted than the will to gain free- 
dom for the world. * I well remember what a long 
breath I drew when I heard Josiah Wedgwood say: 
“T care less how the war against Germany goes now, 
for the Russian revolution assures an advance in 
freedom to the world.” Wedgwood’s statement 
about Germany was, of course, only the exaggera- 


26 The Advancing Hour 


tion of a generous nature in the flush of enthusiasm, 
but the ardor with which he received the turn 
against despotism in a country of nearly 200 millions 
has never ceased. With too many people, even in 
England, it ceased as soon as it seemed to threaten, 
first the military situation and second the property 
security of the world. In parliament Mr. Churchill 
charged Col. Wedgwood with encouraging a class 
war. Col. Wedgwood replied that it was the inter- 
ventionists who were encouraging the class war, but 
if there must be such a war his mind was clear about 
the side on which he should fight. That gallant 
gentleman’s desertion of the Liberal Party for the 
Labor Party cannot be imitated by men of good will 
and enlightenment in this country, because we have 
as yet no strong and representative radical third 
party. 

From England, with her superb political rec- 
ord, let us take a few more illustrations of war’s 
poison. Among the most detestable propaganda- 
lies of all the war was the charge that the Bol- 
sheviks aimed to lower the moral position of 
women; the so-called nationalization of women. At 
one time it was natural for simple and angry minds 
to believe this tale. Did not every one of us have 
acquaintances who in August, 1914, had personally 
seen the Russian army passing through Scotland or 
England? Did any of us lack a friend who had 


The Blockade of Thought 27 


received a letter from Germany, all optimism with- 
in, with “we are starving” written underneath the 
stamp? What overwhelming evidence there was of 
the cutting off of the Belgian boys’ hands, and of 
the factory for making grease of human bodies! 

Lord Robert Cecil is one of my heroes, and yet 
he said there was reason to believe the story about 
the German factory for making grease out of hu- 
man bodies. Here is the history of that story. Von 
Bissing once said to a very distinguished American, 
a good friend of mine: “Everything I have done 
has made the Belgians angry, but I have thought of 
something at last that I believe will please them.” 
He described the rotting horses, especially difficult 
to bury in winter, and his plan for getting rid of the 
bodies and even rendering them useful. 

Another acquaintance of mine was with the Ger- 
man army when this factory was in operation but 
before the news of it had reached the Entente press. 
A General said to him, and to the other journalists 
with him: “You are welcome to tell all you have 
seen, except that I would rather you should not 
mention the Kadaver factory. If you do, the Brit- 
ish are sure to say we use human corpses there.” 

Not that I should have blamed the Germans if 
they had taken that step, but my opinion on that 
subject is neither here nor there. The Northcliffe 
press started the story and proved it by quotations 


28 The Advancing Hour 


from the German newspapers, who with singular 
naiveté told about the Kadaver factory with no em- 
barrassment. Immediately Englishmen who knew 
German pointed out that Kadaver meant in Ger- 
man the body of an animal, never meaning a human 
body except in the one case of dissection. “I wish,” 
said one of Northcliffe’s men to me with a laugh, 
“that the word ‘leichnam’ or ‘leiche’ had been used.” 
But the Northcliffe papers printed German fac- 
similes that few of their readers understood and 
doubtless left-on the general public the impression 
that they had told the truth. 

Perhaps here I ought to say that even the amazing 
percentage of mendacity that is produced in such 
times as these is frequently done purely in the serv- 
ice of virtue. 

It was not to me, but to an intimate friend, that 
an old lady, caught in falsehood about having her- 
self seen the hands of Belgian boys cut off by Ger- 
man order, replied: ‘Yes, it is a fact that I did not 
see the deed myself. The Duchesse de Sceauins- 
ceau, however, who is the soul of honor, saw it. If 
I had written my American friends that the 
Duchesse saw it, they, not knowing her, might not 
believe it; but as I knew she could never tell an 
untruth, I gave the right impression by saying I saw 
the act myself.” Much of the evidence with which 
the war reeked was based on motives as high, and 


The Blockade of Thought 29 


so will be based much of the presentation against 
labor in the most respectable circles in the days 
through which we are to live. 

A friend of mine, an officer, was in Russia at the 
time of the revolution of November. One day some 
time later he was listening to an account of Bol- 
shevik atrocities from an eye-witness of them. One 
incident was that two nurses had had both arms 
cut off, and when help arrived they were standing 
weeping and telling about what had happened. My 
friend expressed surprise that a person could stand 
for six hours with both arms cut off, and ventured 
the opinion that if not dead the nurses would be at 
least unconscious. ‘The narrator’s answer was pa- 
triotic. “TI see,” he said, “that you are not a friend 
of Russia.” 

A man who occupied successfully a high position 
in the American government said to me: “I was 
part of the lie-factory myself. Of course we acted 
for the best of reasons.” 

What happened to Hus, Bruno, Socrates, Savona- 
rola, Joan of Arc, and Jesus Christ? Also, why did 
ithappene Were not all the reasons admirable? 

My impulse to write first about morasses of false- 
hood is more than an interest in the workings of the 
human brain. The fantastic tricks with which we 
weigh evidence has a direct personal importance 
for those of us who only on a foundation cleared of 


30 The Advancing Hour 


hypocrisy can build a faith that is assured; a faith 
whose requirement is not deception but the unbend- 
ing will to see. The great battle to-day throughout 
the world is between_three general groups of men. 
We call them extremists, conservatives, liberals; or 
theorists, reactionaries, moderates; but, whatever the 
names, they are three real types. Often it looks as 
if those of the liberal group are to be pushed aside 
or forced into one of the two great armies. If that 
be so, then must I be pushed to the left; for to go 
to the right would be to abandon the flag. Better 
numberless mistakes than fear; better stumble than 
never climb; better any fate than surrender. But 
before we liberals allow ourselves to be driven by 
follies of the standpatters into the ranks of the ex- 
treme left, we should make eloquent our belief in 
ordered progress, and endeavor that it may be actual 
progress. If I sketch hypocrisy, fear, greed, as I 
have observed those master-forces, it is that opti- 
mism may rest on the open mind. Fiat justitia, ruat 
celum; but the answer comes, if justice is done we 
shall be nearer heaven; and to do justice we must 
not be afraid of thought. Although Americans on 
certain subjects think admirably, they dislike to ex- 
amine foundations. The time is coming when the 
foundations must be examined: when they must be 
altered. The industrial revolution is with us. The 
only question is in what manner it will be con- 


The Blockade of Thought 31 


ducted, and by whom. The world’s attention has 
shifted to the laboring majority, and no cruel clos- 
ing of the property ranks can hold off change. With 
the standpatters rests the choice between painless 
evolution and evolution by shock. I cling to my 
hope in their intelligence, but the hope is none too 
sure: it is rather will and determined faith. On the 
liberals also our reliance is not too strong, for so 
few of them are genuine and resourceful. The la- 
boring masses, knowing sweat and anxiety, smile 
scornfully at reform by hypocrites, or at reform by 
cowards. ‘The lazy and violent among them, in 
these days of concentrated machinery and industrial 
centers, can be held in check only by intelligent 
labor itself. Intelligent labor will codperate with 
a liberalism that understands what has been settled 
and what has been fought out. Assuredly it will 
not codperate with capitalists who imagine that 
collective bargaining is a matter that can still be 
argued. Assuredly it will not trust a combination 
that uses beggarly doles, in so-called profit-sharing 
and pensions, as feeble breast-works to resist the 
right of men to organize, when it is itself a most 
complex organization devised by innumerable 
trained minds. ' 

Let us here give an example of the closing of the 
ranks where no immediate threat to property was 
concerned; only a general shaking of an idea of 


32 The Advancing Hour 


crime and punishment. Select the case of Tom Os- 
borne. People will accept a true and reasonable 
idea if it is merely in a book, even if it is in the New 
Testament. It is only taking a spiritual idea seri- 
ously, attempting to live it, that infuriates them. 
Mr. Osborne made no over-yiolent demand on 
moral faith. His record at Sing Sing he was glad 
to have tested not by hope but by the results as they 
appeared actually on the books. Yet what limit- 
less, unclean lies were concocted to fight him with. 
“Blessed are ye when men shall persecute ye.” I 
went up to this heroic figure one day, when the 
calumnies against him were at their height, and 
said: ‘Well, Mr. Osborne, it is not much fun try- 
ing to practice a little Christianity on week days.” 

‘‘And,” he answered, “the text, if interpreted rea- 
sonably, is so simple. ‘Resist not evil.’ What does 
it meanre Certainly not that we are to acquiesce in 
evil. It means that the way to remove it is not to 
go at it with violence. The true method is to plant 
wholesome growths, by which the harmful ones may 
be driven out.” 

When Tom Osborne served his term in prison, in 
order justly to know, a modern saga was enacted 
before us. Here was no hypocrisy. Here was a 
man. He could not stand against the angry herd. 
He was compelled, for his virtue alone, to leave 
Sing Sing. And when he enlisted in the regular 


The Blockade of Thought 33 


navy, in order to carry on his work, the attacks of 
the stand-pat wolves knew no cease, and his resig- 
nation was not long delayed. 

I now choose an illustration of a different type. 
Probably as we look over the desolation of some of 
the belligerents in the great war, and the disintegra- 
tion and debts even of the victors, there will be 
found few who will deny the thesis that modern 
war is unprofitable even to the victors. Such was 
the thesis of Norman Angell’s famous book. What 
gave to the author his semi-criminal reputation was 
perhaps less the theme of the book than what seemed 
to many to be legible between the lines; that as war 
could not possibly pay it would not be waged. 
Many patriots, in England and America, dislike 
Treitschke and all other extreme militarist philos- 
ophy much less than they do this book. ‘The Great 
Illusion” has meant much to the youth of the world, 
through its spirit, and much to leading liberals 
through its extraordinary powers of analysis and 
historic illustration. It is one of the most contribu- 
tive books of our time: one of those volumes that, 
with better luck, might have helped us avoid the 
world-war. It has been translated into German, © 
French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Span- 
ish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and several languages 
of the Indian Empire. It has been a text book for 
the intellectually fearless among the world’s youth, 


34 The Advancing Hour 


yet to the well-dressed, red-blooded denizens of this 
world, Norman Angell’s name stands for some kind 
of weak sentiment. I was lunching, in 1917, with 
two of the most distinguished statesmen in the 
world, one of them a rising hope of enlightened 
minds. When the course of talk permitted, I said: 
“T think you English make a mistake in confusing 
Norman Angell with mere theoretical pacifists. 
You are refusing him a passport to go back to 
America, and yet he has done more than any other 
Englishman to make it possible for America to en- 
ter the war on your side. He is showing to the 
thinking element, which includes some of the gov- 
erning element, how we can enter the war on prin- 
ciples consistent with our American ideals. You 
have noticed, of course, that a speech by the Presi- 
dent last June spoke of this war as the last in which 
we could remain isolated. That paragraph was ex- 
actly in Angell’s expression. It is an entering 
wedge of the utmost importance. And yet you now 
keep him away from us.” 

What was their answer? ‘That may be true, but 
he has made some very foolish statements.” 

The “statements” were headlines in the news- 
papers. 

Where distinct opposition to enlistment can be 
traced, persecution comes more within the limits of 
that falsity to ideals of freedom which the very act 


The Blockade of Thought 35 


of war makes necessary. The British were fairly 
tolerant with Bertrand Russell. At first they mere- 
ly refused to give him a passport, that he might 
lecture at Harvard University. ‘That is not sur- 
prising, for Kerenski was not allowed to present 
his case (which included opposition to interven- 
tion) in America, though the opinion-factory in 
favor of intervention and blockade was not only 
allowed but subsidized. Many were arrested or 
deported for radical propaganda, but none, so far 
as I know, for reactionary propaganda. In Rus- 
sell’s case his inability to carry his intellectual poison 
by word of mouth across the Atlantic, to corrupt 
our idealistic land, was of minor importance, be- 
cause his books were not forbidden; and for many 
years, in our country as in Britain, those compre- 
hensive, searching, and calm exposures of what is, 
with brilliant suggestions of what should be, will 
continue to do their undermining work. To me it 
is a certain satisfaction that when Mr. Russell kept 
on expounding the truth, he was absolutely impris- 
oned. It gives a medieval thoroughness to the story. 
Perhaps Mr. Russell presents the moral problem of 
our age with more grasp than any other living essay- 
ist. Unmistakably his essays tend to stiffen the fiber 
and develop the higher nature. That his arrest be- 
came necessary, therefore, is to the comic sense de- 
licious. However we are to credit England with 


36 The Advancing Hour 


his return, after his imprisonment, to Cambridge 
University. 

During the war there was one year, 1918, that I 
spent in America, endeavoring in the columns of 
Leslie’s Weekly to see what I could do to establish 
common ground with business men, and otherwise 
busying myself, part of the time in a small town, 
where my gardener belonged to a sect that is pacifist 
as an article of faith. He was far beyond military 
age, but he was suspected of corrupting the young, 
so he kept rather quiet. Once, tempted by an ir- 
reverent remark of my own, he ventured on a ques- 
tion: 

“Suppose Tolstoy had been alive in this war,” he 
asked, ‘what position would he have taken?” 

“That is easy,” I replied. ‘He would have been 
a conscientious objector. ‘They would have gotten 
him unless his social and intellectual standing had 
protected him.” 

The old gardener hesitated. ‘How about Jesus 
Christ?” he inquired. 

I am afraid I smiled. “You do not expect people 
to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously in prac- 
tical affairs, I hope.” 

One of my more radical friends, whose mind I 
have seen at work from the time, over twenty years 
ago, when he was the most vivid reporter in New 
York, down to his present more evangelic stage, is ° 


The Blockade of Thought 37 


Lincoln Steffens, another man who was driven away 
from the liberals because of what he deemed their 
powerlessness and the steadfastness of the stand- 
patriots, patrioteers, or whatever name is loved by 
those who sleeplessly guard the trough. Referring 
to one of my own many little skirmishes with this 
group, Steffens wrote: “We shall have no quarrel 
on revolutions. J have seen some. I am against 
them, as I am against war and all the other unneces- 
sary inconveniences of this life. I do not any more 
directly oppose them, however. My theory is that 
they will occur again and again until we learn to 
deal indirectly, but scientifically, with the causes of 
them. And my further thought is that, if we, the 
governing class, will not so manhandle the forces 
which make for evil, the governed class will. And 
when the mob tackles its own problem, it will act 
in its own spirit and its own rough way, regardless 
of the canons of our good taste. In other words, if 
you are for evolution, show us evolution. I can’t 
see any evolutionists at work. Your own experience 
is in point. The U. S. Senate does not want the 
class war, but it is forcing liberals to abandon lib- 
eralism and take sides either with the reactionaries 
or with Labor and the radicals. You have tried to 
stand between. The Senate won’t let you. And the 
Bolsheviks won’t let you. It is a literal case of both 
ends against the middle.” I wrote Steffens further 


38 The Advancing Hour 


explaining that I wished there was a reform party 
in America broad enough to hold him, certain care- 
ful reformers, whom I selected as the type of sane 
radicals, and myself. He replied that he did not 
think that as a fact a party could he formed that 
was broad enough to include these forces. 

Before our liberals‘can make even a partial an- 
swer to men like Steffens, or indeed to men of the 
school of Lenin or Karl Marx, we must clear the 
decks by treating the follies of our thought as piti- 
lessly as they can be treated by any socialist or anar- 
chist. We must not say to them that the evils they 
cry against do not exist. We must demonstrate that 
a surer cure exists, slower, but with no patent- 
medicine quicksands of haste and false promise. 


CHAPTER III 


WHAT THE ISSUES ARE 


A. NATIONALISM 


“These unspeakably stupid and contemptible local 
antipathies are inherited by civilized men from that 
far-off time when the clan system prevailed over the 
face of the earth, and the hand of every clan was 
raised against its neighbors. They are pale and 
evanescent survivals from the universal primitive 
warfare, and the sooner they die out from human 
society, the better for every one.” 

John Fiske. 


HERE are of course before us many minor 
issues, which arise and disappear. ‘There 
are two great issues which will be predom- 

inant for a long time. Our attitude on these two 
great issues determines whether we belong among 
the revolutionaries or “radicals,” among the lib- 
erals or among the conservatives. ‘These issues are, 
first, the relations that ought to exist between dif- 
ferent classes, and second, the relations that ought 
to exist between different nations. In the class issue 
the radicals are the socialists, the liberals are those 


who seek the purification and supplementing of the 
39 


40 The Advancing Hour 


system of private property, and the conservatives are 
those who want to retain the present feudal system 
in industry and property. In relations between the 
nations the radicals are those who believe in com- 
plete internationalism, or in lack of any government, 
like the philosophic anarchists, the liberals are those 
who believe in national differences and feelings but 
in close codperation among the nations and in great 
tolerance toward different methods of growth, and 
the conservatives are those who use patriotism as an 
expression of parochial distrust and those also who 
want to impose our ideals by force on others. In 
general the conservatives in industry belong to the 
second of the two classes of conservatives in foreign 
affairs. To the first class of conservatives in for- 
eign affairs, the parochials, you find belonging many 
who in domestic matters are liberals, and this ap- 
plies especially to people who live in the west and 
have for a long time given lively attention to domes- 
tic problems but know nothing whatever about 
international matters and therefore view them with 
rustic distrust. Senator Borah and Senator Johnson 
are examples of these. Of the second class of con- 
servatives in foreign affairs an example are those 
who would take satisfaction in introducing “order” 
into Mexico and incidentally absorbing her most 
valuable properties, and to this class belong the 
majority of those who find complete satisfaction in 


What the Issues Are 41 


the system by which one man, or a group of igno- 
rant stockholders, dispose completely of the des- 
tinies of all the men and women who work in a 
factory. General Wood seems to be an example. 
As this book deals with the question of what 1s prog- 
ress to-day it has to do mainly with these two dif- 
ferent but psychologically related sets of questions. 
It is to be hoped that the issues of our political cam- 
paigns will be centered more and more on them. 
The foreign group of questions, finding its center in 
the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations, cannot 
be solved automatically. It can have the most fa- 
vorable outcome only if the minds of the voters are 
kept steadily on international affairs. An absolute 
essential of progressive thinking along this line lies 
in better news service and in a lessening of the dead- 
ening propaganda of the governments that have 
been exercising censorships for several years. The 
industrial question is sure to be kept sharply before 
us. In that question what we need to pray for is an 
open mind, lack of fear, and an unselfish spirit. 
The make-believe issues of our meaningless party 
divisions do harm and obstruct the attention given 
to the real issues. Let me give as an illustration the 
conduct of the majority leader in the United States 
Senate at a moment in the world’s history when 
nothing less was involved than the life of European 
civilization. Most of us believe in party govern- 


'‘A2 The ‘Advancing Hour 


ment, but there is great danger in partisan littleness. 
No one will pretend that President Wilson has been 
tactful with the Republicans, but he has been crea- 
tive and devoted, and those who have lowered their 
standard of world-relations in order either to pun- 
ish him or to maintain their own power have com- 
mitted a crime much worse than those on the statute 
books. Before the President took up the leadership 
of the League of Nations work Senator Lodge ex- 
pressed himself with fervor in support of it. On 
May 26, 1916, at Washington, under the auspices of 
the League to Enforce Peace, he said: 

“Tt was a year ago that in delivering the Chan- 
cellor’s address at Union College I made an argu- 
ment on this theory: that if we were to promote 
international peace at the close of the present terri- 
ble war, if we were to restore international law as 
it must be restored, we must find some way in which 
the united forces of the nations could be put behind 
the cause of peace and law. I said then that my 
hearers might think I was picturing a Utopia, but 
it is in the search for Utopias that great discoveries 
have been made. ‘Not failure, but low aim is the 
crime.’ ‘This league certainly has the highest of all 
aims for the benefit of humanity, and because the 
pathway is sown with difficulties is no reason that 
we should turn from it. It is the vision of a per- 
haps impossible perfection which has led humanity 


What the Issues Are 43 


across the centuries. If our aspirations are for that 
which is great and beautiful and good and benefi- 
cent to humanity, even when we do not achieve our 
end, even if the results are little, we can at least 
remember Arnold’s lines: 


‘Charge again, then, and be dumb. 

Let the victors, when they come, 

When the forts of folly fall, 

Find your body at the wall.’ ” 
Comparing the tone then with much of the Sena- 
tor’s language after partisanship was introduced 
into the question shows how much the ideal is low- 
ered in the heat of party politics. Senator Lodge’s 
manner of t° xing about our responsibilities abroad 
underwent a complete change of emphasis. He no 
longer asked us to be generous and fearless, in a 
wholly necessary enterprise to save the world from 
destruction. He said: ‘The hearts of the vast ma- 
jority of mankind would beat on strongly and with- 
out any quickening if the League were to perish 
altogether.” He began to sneer at such things, to 
talk about being an American and nothing but an 
American, in th: cheap vein of pseudo-patriotism, 
until one woulds | 1c uu. che vast credit of being 
born .e United States was enough to free a per- 
son from the exercise of any other virtue. By this 
kind of vain and obstructive patriotism Gilbert’s 
lines are inevitably brought to mind: 


4A, The Advancing Hour 


he 
“For he himself has said it! 
And it’s greatly to his credit, 
That he is an Englishman! 
That he is an Englishman! 
For he might have been a Rooshun, 
A French, or Turk, or Prooshun, 
Or perhaps Italian, 
Or perhaps Italian. 
But in spite of all temptations 
To belong to other nations, 
He remains an Englishman!” 


Lodge’s version of it is this: “An American I 
was born, an American I have remained all my life. 
I can never be anything else but American. * * * 
I have never had but one allegiance—I cannot 
divide itnow. I have loved but one flag and I can- 
not share that devotion and give affection to the 
mongrel banner invented for a League. * * * 
National I must remain ff 

The perils of internationalism are nothing com- 
pared to the perils of this kind of nationalism. 
With class-narrowness it forms our gravest menace, 
and the danger it presents is greater than is offered 
by the class-conflict, since a highly organized war to 
the death between classes is far less probable than 
such a war between the nations. It was false na- 
tionalism that brought on this war. It is false na- 
tionalism that will bring on the next war. Our way 
of treating Mexico or South America is importa: 


What the Issues Are AS 


in itself, but still more important is the mood it en- 
courages, the traditions and ideals it creates, for by 
such moods, traditions, and ideals the next world- 
war will be created or avoided. Moreover, the 
class-conflict, however regrettable in some of its 
forms, is a struggle toward industrial justice, and 
therefore has its great creative role jin history; 
whereas the nationalism of distrust offers us nothing 
but barbarism. ‘There is an Americanism that has 
its meaning, but this is not it. 

The two preceding chapters have hinted that 
some of the obstacles to fair understanding between 
nations are artificially built up. The fear that we 
have of hearing both sides of important questions is 
one of the most extraordinary attributes of man. 
One would suppose, for example, that when the 
great war was ended our statesmen and leaders gen- 
erally would have welcomed all the historical 
knowledge obtainable, including documents show- 
ing the points of view of the various elements in 
Germany. A normal desire to get the attitude of 
General Ludendorff did credit to the newspaper 
readers of this country, and his account of the war 
as he saw it was successfully syndicated. Now look 
at our statesmen. You can find their brand of pa- 
triotism in the Congressional Record for September 
28, 1919: 

Mr. Chamberlain: “Can it be that his propa- 


46 The Advancing Hour 


ganda is to be disseminated in the United States 
through the instrumentality of a so-called history 
of the war or story of the war? Are the American 
people to be educated from the German stand- 
point and to have the German theory of the rea- 
son for the war, Germany’s innocence in its instiga- 
tion, its harmless carrying on of the war, through 
the instrumentality of the story of this man? 

Mr. Lodge: Is it proposed to publish serially or 
in any other way such a thing as thatr 

Mr. Chamberlain: Absolutely. If the Senator 
will observe some of the newspapers he will find 
that they are promising now to publish in the 
near future the so-called Ludendorff story of the 
war. 

Mr. Lodge: [I trust it will not be done. 

Mr. Chamberlain: I am just expressing that 
hope, and I am glad to have the Senator join with 
Mey 
“Mr. President, America has over 200,000 casual- 
ties as a result of the war. Not only are her hos- 
pitals filled with boys who have been maimed by 
the cruel processes of German warfare, but the 
asylums as well are filled in some instances with 
young men who were shell-shocked or otherwise dis- 
abled by the system of warfare waged under Luden- 
dorff’s direction. The American people have 
learned who are the authors of this war. They know 


What the Issues Are AW 


it was the settled plan of the militarists of Germany 
to become involved in it and to wage it. They know 
that it was their purpose in the last analysis to make 
America assist in the payment for the war, if cur- 
rent and contemporaneous history is to be believed. 
Notwithstanding that belief and knowledge, are 
we to have this friend of the reportorial system of 
Europe introduce his methods into this country and 
slyly instill into the American people not only that 
Germany was innocent of instituting the war but 
that the German methods were kindly and its pur- 
poses lofty? 

“T for one, Mr. President, hope that the news- 
papers of the country, and I am glad to say that 
practically all of them were patriotic and loyal in 
the war, will without any action upon the part of 
Congress, but simply inspired by the same motives 
of patriotism which animated them during the war, 
decline absolutely to print this story of the war by 
the man who was the reputed military leader and 
who is so largely responsible for German cruelty 
and brutality. 

“T call attention of the Congress to this matter, 
Mr. President, in the hope that, if this story is to 
be printed, there may be some public expression 
about the author of this so-called history of the war, 
so that people may be warned in advance to read 
it with caution as a part of the system of German 


48 The Advancing Hour 


propaganda, deliberately planned to poison the 
minds of the American people, and of the fathers 
and mothers, wives and sweethearts of our heroic 
ead, © 

Mr. Chamberlain explained that he knew little 
about Ludendorff himself, but that he had read in 
“Current Opinion” that he was a bad man. Now 
Mr. Chamberlain as Governor of Oregon had a 
progressive record. He represents perfectly the 
well-meaning parochial mind afraid of the un- 
known, afraid even to have the American people 
know what the German militaristic standpoint 
really was. In his opinion it would be far safer to 
protect our people from such soul-destroying knowl- 
edge and simply tell them in words of one syllable 
what their conclusions ought to be. 

The liberal attitude toward foreign affairs must 
be aggressively maintained, if liberalism is to do 
its work, and one of its outstanding principles will 
be that full knowledge of other peoples must be 
encouraged. Instead of dividing nations into our 
friends and our enemies we should put all possible 
emphasis on sympathetic comprehension of all. No 
one sentence is more misused than the one about 
entangling alliance in Washington’s Farewell Ad- 
dress. Entangling in whate Washington was 
talking about pressing realities, not about anything 
that happened a century earlier or might happen 


What the Issues Are 49 


a century later. He had had great difficulty in 
keeping his countrymen from getting into a mean- 
ingless second war with England merely as a result 
of lingering hostility to that country and lingering 
partisanship for France. He was talking to a weak 
nation that was not considering going into any 
league of nations, but was in danger of being 
dragged into a fight for control between the two 
dominant nations of Europe. He was facing the 
spirit Senator Lodge expresses to-day when he de- 
claims “we owe no debt to any one except to 
France.” Moreover this little nation was absolutely 
removed from all the concerns of Europe, and we 
do small honor to Washington’s mind to suppose he 
would have taken no account of steam, the tele- 
graph, the wireless, modern trade, the change from 
a little group of colonists in a wilderness to a most 
powerful nation that had just emerged from par- 
ticipation in a world-war, and was considering 
whether it would participate in an attempt at pre- 
venting another. A far closer analogy to our own 
problem was presented to Washington when he 
took part in the controversy over the constitution, 
or as it was then often called, the treaty between 
the thirteen states. The arguments brought forward 
to show that a combination among the states would 
mean danger, oppression and disaster were ridicu- 
lously like those brought against the League of Na- 


50 The Advancing Hour 


tions by its opponents in the Senate and the press. 
Mr. Charles P. Howland has brought together some 
of these similarities in a way that is at once amusing 
and instructive. Here are examples: 

In the New York Convention of 1788 a speaker 
objected to union “because [I think it is morally cer- 
tain that this new Government will be administered 
by the wealthy.” In Massachusetts Mr. Singletary 
said: “These lawyers and men of learning and 
monied men, that talk so finely and gloss over mat- 
ters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people 
swallow down the pill, expect to get into Congress 
themselves; they expect to be the managers of this 
Constitution and to get all the power and all the 
money into their own hands, and then they will 
swallow up all us little folks, lke the great 
Leviathan, Mr. President, yes, just as the whale > 
swallowed up Jonah.” 

In our own day Mr. Borah of Idaho says: “If 
the Democratic party and the Republican party 
have passed under the grip and control of the inter- 
national bankers of New York, who are financing 
the League to Enforce Peace, and sending out hun- 
dreds and thousands of speakers and flooding the 
land with propaganda in favor of the League of 
Nations—if both parties have passed under their 
control—there will be another party which will 
represent the American people.” 


What the Issues Are 51 


As we now seek scares over control of our inter- 
ests by the common voice, so Mr. Lowndes of South 
Carolina said: ‘The interest of the Northern 
States would so predominate as to divest us of any 
pretensions to the title of Republic.” Patrick 
Henry declared: “This government subjects every- 
thing to the Northern majority. We thus put un- 
bounded power over our property in hands not hay- 
ing a common interest with us * * * Sir, this 
is a picture so horrid, so wretched, so dreadful, that 
I need no longer dwell upon it.’ Our own 
Senator Sherman of Illinois comes along with 
this: “I regard it as a new sovereign power 
proposed, assuming to assert dominion over govern- 
ments and nations, to sit in judgment on the Amer- 
ican people, and frame new laws to order their 
lives and seize their property. Its decrees, if effec- 
tive, bind the United States Government, abrogate 
its Constitution, and rule our people by laws made 
in Geneva, Switzerland.” ‘The opponents of Wash- 
ington had their own “Geneva, Switzerland.” “Is 
this, sir,” said Mr. Tredwell of New York, “a gov- 
ernment for freemenre Are we thus to be duped of 
our liberties? * * * We ought, sir, to consider 
that we may now give away by a vote what it may 
cost the dying groans of thousands to recover; that 
we may now surrender with a little ink what it may 
cost seas of blood to regain; the dagger of ambition 


Crmy . —— 
ITY OF Friars 


52 The Advancing Hour 


is now pointed at the fair bosom of liberty and to 
deepen and complete the tragedy, we, her sons, are 
called upon to give the fatal thrust.” 

How like Senator Johnson of California: “No 
group of men sitting in Washington will keep the 
Treaty out of the campaign. How futile it is for 
those men to insist that the American flag shall be 
buried and ask the American people to walk over 
its grave.” 

Related, of course, to “Geneva, Switzerland,” is 
“delegating power.” Mr. Smith said in the New 
York Convention: “Can the liberties of three mil- 
lions of people be securely trusted in the hands of 
three men? Is it prudent to commit to so small a 
number the decision of the great questions which 
will come before theme Reason revolts at the 
idea.’ Mr. Wadsworth of New York now says: 
‘‘H1as the time come when the people of the United 
States are ready to rely upon the judgment of one 
man, sitting at the capital of Switzerland, who, by 
his vote, may pledge support of the people of the 
United States to an undertaking with which they 
are utterly unfamiliar?” 

There is the fear of giving more than we receive. 
Mr. Grayson of Virginia said: ‘What is the situ- 
ation of Virginia? She is rich with her resources 
as compared with those of others. Is it right for a 
rich nation to consolidate with a poor one? What 


What the Issues Are 53 


does she get in return? I can see what she gives up, 
which is immense. The little states gain in propor- 
tion as we lose. Every disproportion is against us.”’ 
The modern equivalent is Senator Reed: ‘The 
American people and the American Government 
have nearly all they can attend to at home without 
spreading themselves out over the world and trying 
to take care of all the good Lord’s creation.” 

The less the orator knows the more eloquent and 
alarmed his tone, and Washington will soon hint 
for us a similar difficulty in his time. 

“Ambiguity” has been almost the favorite charge 
against the League. “If we adopt this Constitu- 
tion,” protested Mr. Williams of New York in 
1788, “it is impossible, absolutely impossible, to 
know what we give up, and what we retain.” Sena- 
tor Brandegee of Connecticut calls the treaty ‘‘this 
muddy, murky and muddled document of interna- 
tional entanglements and embarrassments.” 

Mandates and similar bogies had their counter- 
part in Washington’s day. George Mason “appre- 
hended the possibility of Congress calling in the 
militia of Georgia to quell disturbances in New 
Hampshire.” In our day Illinois comes out strong 
to defend us against this danger. One of her sena- 
tors, Mr. Sherman, says: “Hereafter, if we an- 
swer the President’s call, mothers will but cradle 
their sons to fill the muster rolls of armies to give 


54 The Advancing Hour 


their lives in foreign service. We must spend our 
substance, it is further insisted, to resurrect and re- 
deem people stunted by racial fault and vices and 
schooled for generations in chronic revolts and gen- 
eral insubordination against the tranquillity of 
peaceful life.’ The other Senator from Illinois, 
Mr. McCormick, is not less careful: “Our young 
men will go forth to defend cities of which they 
never heard. In the high places of Asia, the snow 
will cover the frozen bodies of Americans, perhaps 
now unborn, and American mothers—little girls of 
to-day, mayhap, playing in the summer air about 
the dooryards—will mourn their sons fallen in the 
desert wastes of Syria and Egypt.” 

Cannot John Fiske, whom I have quoted at the 
head of this chapter, be called in to sum up not only 
the smaller fears and jealousies of that day, but the 
equally obstructive and blind arguments against 
world codperation to-day? 

Now to this problem, so analogous in its psychol- 
ogy, and truly also in its essence, to our foreign 
problem of to-day, what was the response of the 
father of his countryr He was by unanimous con- 
sent president of the Assembly that adopted the 
Constitution. On August 19, 1797, he wrote to 
Knox: “I am fully persuaded it is the best that can 
be obtained at the present moment under such a di- 
versity of ideas as prevail.” On September 24, 


What the Issues Are 55 


1787, he wrote to Patrick Henry: “I wish the 
Constitution, which is offered, had been made more 
perfect; but I sincerely believe it is the best that 
could be obtained at this time. And, as a constitu- 
tional door is opened for amendment hereafter, our 
adoption of .it, under the present circumstances of 
the Union, is in my opinion desirable.” 

He had little respect for the opposition. It ex- 
isted largely, he thought, “because the importance 
and sinister views of too many characters will be 
affected by the change.” Of the opponents of the 
Constitution he said: “The major part of them 
will, it is to be feared, be governed by sinister and 
self important motives.” Again of the opponents 
he wrote to Hamilton: “Some of whom, it is said, 
by overshooting the marks, have lessened their 
weight. Be this as it may, their assiduity stands un- 
rivalled.” 

Of the objections put forward he wrote to David 
Stuart: “I have hardly seen one, that was not ad- 
dressed to the passions of the people, and obviously 
calculated to alarm their fears.” 

To Edmund Randolph he wrote that if he had 
ever had any belief that amendments before trial 
could be obtained and result in improvement he 
had been cured of that belief by the kind of argu- 
ments put forward. Can we not warm to that state- 
ment to-day? Washington wrote to John Arm- 


56 The Advancing Hour 


strong, April 25, 1788: “That the proposed Con- 
stitution will admit of amendments is acknowledged 
by its warmest advocates; but to make such amend- 
ments as may be proposed the condition of its adop- 
tion would, in my opinion, amount to a complete 
rejection of it. . . . The truth is, men are too 
apt to be swayed by local prejudices.” 

On August 31, 1788, he wrote to Jefferson: ‘For 
myself I was ready to embrace any tolerable com- 
promise, that was competent to save us from im- 
pending ruin.” 

I should like particularly to ask Americans to 
translate the following words of Washington to 
Knox, October, 1787, into terms of to-day: 

“rt, Is the Constitution, which is submitted by 
the Convention, preferable to the government (if it 
can be called one) under which we now liver 

‘9, Is it probable that more confidence would | 
at the time be placed in another Convention, pro- 
vided the experiment should be tried, than was 
placed in the last one, and is it likely that a better 
agreement would take place thereine What would 
be the consequence if these should not happen, or 
even from the delay, which must inevitably follow 
such an experiment? [Is there not a constitutional 
door open for alterations or amendments? And is it 
not likely that real defects will be as readily dis- 
covered after as before trial? And will not our 


What the Issues Are 57 


successors be as ready to apply the remedy as our- 
selves, if occasion should require it? To think 
otherwise will, in my judgment, be ascribing more 
of the amor patria, more wisdom and more virtue 
to ourselves than I think we deserve.” 

What closer parallel could be expected to the 
reasons put forth by President Wilson, except that 
President Wilson was less willing to accept com- 
promise and claimed more excellence, or seemed to, 
for the Peace Treaty and the League than Washing- 
ton claimed for the Constitution of the United 
States? But I think what was in Mr. Wilson’s head, 
if not in his words, was the same thing that was in 
Washington’s. Mr. Wilson believed the treaty 
good because it was as good as the powers were 
likely then to agree to, and because it could be 
amended: not to be sure as easily as it ought to be 
amended; but if it is successful in action one of the 
early steps will probably be to make amendment 
easier. 

Woodrow Wilson’s insight was deep when it told 
him that if he could bring about a machinery by 
which nations should consult, he would be doing 
the greatest service that any statesman could render. 
He was right in principle, whatever may be true 
of method and detail, when he fought against 
amendments in advance of trial, and against reser- 
vations, which in practice meant the attempt to give 


58 The Advancing Hour 


to the United States a position of special favor. He 
was right when he sought to make the League ma- 
chinery as strong and definite as possible, in order 
that it might not become a mere Hague tribunal. 
He was right when he saw in the possibility of an- 
other world-war the dominant issue of our time, as 
Washington after the revolution saw the greatest 
danger in differences among the states. 

Looking at this great question of international 
cooperation in a broad and competent spirit, there 
is only one objection of first-class importance that 
can be made to the point of view I have been sup- 
porting. Itis that the League might, if the machin- 
ery were not right, become a League of conservation 
and imperialism, like the Holy Alliance. This is 
what has been in the minds of the most intelligent 
among those who have made such a fight against 
the difficulty of amendment, and against Article X, 
as they interpret that article. It is a real danger, 
but it is a danger that can be met in only one way, 
as the President has fully realized. It can be met 
only by the election of advanced liberal legislatures 
and executives. Without that step there can be no 
safety. Without meeting that responsibility de- 
mocracy can never be safe. 


What the Issues Are 59 


B. THE CLASS CONFLICT 


“So distribution should undo excess 
And each man have enough.” 


“King Lear.” 


“T do not mean to suggest that the means by which 
the Russians overthrew first Czardom and then 
Kerenski are at all the means by which the British 
will escape from a very different régime. I only 
say that oil and water will not mix, and that sub- 
stantial uniformity of class-structure ts essential to 
a League of Commonwealths. If this ts so, the 
social question 1s the question which above all others 


demands an answer.” 
Ge De EH Cole: 


For the desirable issue of the conflict between the. 
classes the outlook is much more promising than is 
the outlook for preventing further conflicts between 
the nations. This better outlook grows mainly out 
of the fact that people are interested in the indus- 
trial question. They are compelled to be interested. 
It is not something remote, like the next war, but 
something that they have to deal with in daily 
business, in daily housekeeping. However unlike 
in certain habits, the employer and the laborer, 
the mistress and the maid, speak usually a common 
language, through which they get a certain amount 
of information and thought across to one an- 
other. 


60 The Advancing Hour 


The class-conflict has taken a long step in advance 
recently because of the single fact that it has come 
to be generally recognized that there is something to 
fight about. It has now become almost a joke, ex- 
cept among patriotic and frightened orators, to 
speak of this as the best of all possible worlds. We 
know now that it is full of evil that can be and ought 
to be removed. There are hidebound conservatives 
left but they are comic figures, and the conflict has 
been shifted to the best means of bringing about 
what the overwhelming majority of rational persons 
know must be brought about. The war put us back- 
wards, in some respects, in the consideration of this 
question, but on the whole it greatly put us forward. 
Bertrand Russell was sent to jail for six months for 
saying that the American Army at home is accus- 
tomed to intimidating strikers, but on the other hand 
more and more of us realize that the army, the legis- 
latures, and the courts have not been, on the whole, 
used in an attempt to seek disinterested justice but 
rather to reassure and protect those who occupy the 
pleasant positions. The fuller realization of the 
elements of the situation, by all classes, takes us a 
good distance on the road toward proper solutions. 
Those solutions of the social and industrial ques- 
tions will also not improbably be the only roads to 
the final satisfactory solution of international ques- 
tions, since it is extremely probable that the right 


What the Issues Are 61 


handling of international relations is impossible for 
the present type of class governments, whose preju- 
dices, fears, and imagined interests prevent free 
thought and free experiment. Although, therefore, 
of all the questions now confronting liberalism the 
foreign group is the most menacing, the industrial 
group in the last analysis offers the final answers. 
Ten and fifteen years ago, in the halcyon days of 
“muck-raking,” the task of the liberal was to shock 
the complacent bourgeois into a realization that 
not everything was right with the world. ‘Theodore 
Roosevelt was the greatest of that reforming group 
in his ability to reach the popular mind and heart. 
Intellectually, creatively, expertly the greatest, [ 
think, without question was Mr. Brandeis. It was 
to a friend of mine that Bill Haywood once said: 
“Brandeis is the most dangerous man in the United 
States.” If we follow that anecdote back to its 
origin and meaning we shall find in concrete form 
the world-wide issue of to-day: which path are we 
going to take to industrial reform? Haywood’s re- 
mark was made at a time when there was a most 
difficult situation in the garment-making industry 
in New York. The conditions of employment in 
that industry are about as bad as they could be. The 
work is seasonal, with an extraordinary amount of 
involuntary unemployment. The labor is shifting 
and poorly educated. It is just the situation to make 


62 The Advancing Hour 


strikes easy and permanent satisfactory solutions 
difficult. Mr. Brandeis worked out a plan showing 
such knowledge of the business, of the needs of capi- 
tal, and of the psychology of labor that it was on all 
sides looked upon as an amazing triumph of con- 
structive thinking. To describe the whole protocol 
would not fall within the scope of this book, but I 
may take as an illustration of the complex solution 
the brilliant method of meeting the old difficulty 
between the closed and the open shop. There were 
evils in both open and closed shops. ‘The closed 
shop was potentially despotic. It could be used as 
a weapon of coercion even when labor on a specific 
dispute was wrong. The open-shop was little more 
than a polite term for the fight against collective 
bargaining—collective, that is to say, on the labor 
end. In the preferential union shop union men 
were to be given the preference in employment, but 
if at any time the unions failed to furnish the 
requisite number of suitable men the employer was 
free to employ non-union men, with this condition, 
however, that he could not employ them on terms 
in any respect worse than those won by the unions. 
A difference between the whole protocol, of which 
this idea was a detail, and other innovations by Mr. 
Brandeis, is that the others, once started, ran inde- 
pendent of his personality, whereas this agreement 
suffered greatly when he ceased to be able to help 


What the Isswes Are 63 


carry it out in practice. But Haywood’s comment 
was just, and might have been made of almost any 
other of Mr. Brandeis’s contributions to our stock 
of exact ideas about how to usher in the new indus- 
trial era. What Haywood meant was that Mr. 
Brandeis was the most dangerous to the I. W. W. 
He was most dangerous to the philosophy that there 
is no hope in evolution, and that therefore the eyes 
of the laboring class must be fixed on revolution. 
That is the question that we cannot escape. Are 
we to welcome, to think out with all our power, 
sound steps, always in the direction of more de- 
mocracy in industry; or are we to rely on stubborn 
oppositione Mr. Haywood was putting in personal 
form the view of the revolutionary agitator. Hay- 
wood is not afraid of Senator Penrose, Senator 
Smoot, Senator Lodge, Senator Knox, or of the 
masters of these men, from Judge Gary down. He, 
knows that if the tone of the capitalist class is set 
by such minds, capitalism is doomed. ‘To him the 
dangerous man is he who can make private capital 
a satisfactory institution. 

One objection will here be made by thinking peo- 
ple. An argument will run something like this: “If 
it is true that extreme radicals see the most per- 
manent danger to their theories in the success of lib- 
eralism, why do not they more often oppose liberal 
measures? Why do they often support them?” 


64 The Advancing Hour. 


The question is a fair one. There is a very large 
body of extremists who refuse to have anything 
whatever to do with liberalism or any form of par- 
liamentarism. Such are the great syndicalist bodies 
of France, and such is the I. W. W. in America. 
There has always been a sharp division in the So- 
cialist party on the question. It was normal for 
the British Fabian socialists to go into the British 
Labor Party: in their very name lies the explana- 
tion. It is natural, on the other hand, for the Brit- 
ish Labor Party to refuse the degree of cooperation 
offered to it in elections by the Liberal Party, be- 
cause it believes that the British Liberal Party is 
too vague for the times, and that the Labor Party 
is the real liberal party in relation to the problems 
of our day. The British Labor Party is the most 
promising existing political party in the world be- 
Cause in it are found combined the elements that 
here are scattered: elements like the most progres- 
sive among those who followed Mr. Roosevelt, the 
most progressive among those who followed Mr. 
Wilson, the ablest labor leaders, and the exceptional 
and constructive individual thinkers. In the United 
States a constructive liberal is strongly impelled to 
work outside of party machinery. In England, 
after decades of preparatory thought and effort, ap- 
propriate machinery was prepared for him when 
in 1917 the most active forward thought of the na- 


What the Issues Are 65 


tion combined into one party. To explain Hay- 
wood further, I might put his view like this: If 
there were a thousand men equal to Mr. Brandeis 
in the United States, there could be no doubt that 
we should find methods to introduce industrial de- 
mocracy without ever giving the apostles of violence 
a possibility of attaining power. But to over- 
emphasize genius is unfair. It is the general spirit 
that is most important, and if we were right in 
spirit we should develop leaders enough. If busi- 
ness, the bar, the bench, the clergy, and the 
universities were led by liberals revolution could 
have no meaning other than evolution. 

I believe that nobody can be an effective liberal 
to-day and not sympathize with the objects of labor 
as conservatively set forth by Mr. Henderson: 

“Tn the field of national finance the Labour Party 
stands for a system of taxation regulated not by the 
interests of possessing and profiteering classes, but 
by the claims of the professional and housekeeping 
classes, whose interests are identical with those of 
the manual workers. We believe that indirect taxa- 
tion upon commodities should not fall upon any 
necessity of life, but should be limited to luxuries, 
especially and principally those which it is socially 
desirable to extinguish. Direct taxation, we hold, 
upon large incomes and private fortunes is the 
method by which the greater part of the necessary 


66 The Advancing Hour 


revenue should be raised; we advocate the retention 
in some appropriate form of the excess profits tax; 
and we shall oppose every attempt to place upon 
the shoulders of the producing classes, the profes- 
sional classes, and the small traders, the main finan- 
cial burden of the war. We seek to prevent, by 
methods of common ownership and of taxation, the 
accumulation of great fortunes in private hands. 
Instead of senseless individual extravagances we de- 
sire to see the wealth of the nation expended for 
social purposes—for the constant improvement and 
increase of the nation’s enterprises, to make pro- 
vision for the sick, the aged, and the infirm, to estab- 
lish a genuine national system of education, to pro- 
vide the means of public improvements in all 
directions by which the happiness and health of the 
people will be ensured.” 

That is the spirit of labor that capital must cor- 
dially codperate with, if its successful operation is 
not to be rendered impossible by the followers of 
Haywood and Lenin. Mr. Henderson wrote while 
the war was still being waged, but as in the United 
States the most incredible interferences with liberty 
have come since the war ended we may well notice 
the close connection Mr. Henderson traces between 
the labor program and the right to freedom. He 
Says: 

“The military censorship has developed into a 


What the Issues 'Are 67, 


wonderful political engine which enable the au- 
thorities systematically to control the press. It en- 
ables the executive not merely to control opinion 
but to manufacture it. On the one hand it pre- 
vents free discussion of questions of public policy; 
on the other it guides the public mind by means 
of a steady stream of artful suggestion and official 
‘information’ manipulated and colored in accord- 
ance with official views. The seizure of pamphlets, 
the suppression of newspapers, the attempt to bring 
under the survey of the censorship every leaflet, 
pamphlet, and printed sheet dealing however re- 
motely with questions of war and peace, are only 
additional illustrations of this dangerous develop- 
ment by which truth is rationed, political opinion 
made to order in government factories, and an arti- 
ficial unity by the simple expedient of denying ex- 
pression to dissident views. ‘The practical denial 
of free speech and the right of the public meeting, 
both by direct prohibition and by the far worse 
method of permitting meetings to be broken up by 
organized violence, is another development against 
which democracy is bound to protest. Still more 
sinister is the growth of espionage and police in- 
quisition: the adoption of continental methods of 
surveillance represents an invasion of private life 
by the agents of authority which before the war one 


68 The Advancing Hour 


would have confidently declared this country would 
never tolerate.” 

In the years ahead of us, in which the respective 
right of different industrial classes will be, under 
many disguises, the actual pressing issue, it will 
be impossible for us to march with any confidence 
toward the inevitable new civilization unless we 
are allowed to maintain the best British and Amer- 
ican traditions of free information, free thought, 
and free speech. But these words are written while 
the legislature of the Empire State is expelling 
some of its members for belonging to a party hold- 
ing opinions with which the majority of the New 
York legislature does not agree. Six years ago we 
could not have believed such a thing possible in a 
so-called free country. 


CHAPTER IV 
WITHOUT A PARTY 


“The masters of the Government of the United 
States are the combined manufacturers of the 


United States.” 
Woodrow Wilson. 


“The survival in the United States of two parties, 
two ‘machines, which differ very little in their 
programs, and which are both made up of ele- 
ments absolutely heterogeneous.” 


Emile Vandervelde. 


N ‘April of this year one of my most intelli- 
gent Russian friends asked me what position 

. I expected to take in the approaching cam- 
paign. “Assuming,” I replied, “that the President 
will not be a candidate there are only two men 
now in the field whom I could support. Others may 
come to the front before June, but the principle will 
remain the same. ‘The man must measure up to the 
requirements. ‘That is more important than the 
platform. At present only two such men are promi- 
nent. If neither of them is nominated, and if no 
unexpected candidate appears, I shall either vote a 
third-party ticket, in a general effort to strengthen 


the left, or remain at home and read a novel.” 
69 


70 The ‘Advancing Hour 


My friend was amazed. ‘Nobody in Europe,” 
he said, “would understand a speech like that. 
Parties with us mean too much to be taken in that 
way.” 

“Certainly they do,” I replied. “But in this 
country they do not.” 

Of course my statement about staying at home on 
election day was not literal. There is always some 
issue. A good deal has happened in America in the 
two months that have elapsed between that conver- 
sation and the day, just before the Republican nomi- 
nation, when I write these particular sentences. 
Nothing has happened, however, or is likely soon 
to happen, affecting the idea I was explaining to my 
foreign friend about the relative lack of meaning 
and lack of responsibility in our parties to-day. 

If Mr. Wilson’s statement, put at the head of 
this chapter, is correct, we shall not be surprised 
to find that there are no essential living issues divid- 
ing our two great parties. Certain it is that they 
are not divided along the lines of the two great 
groups of contemporary problems, outlined in the 
last chapter. Therefore for a person who lives in 
real issues there is in the United States no place 
politically for him to go with satisfaction to his 
mind. The parties express little more than the im- 
pulse of contest. Party spirit exists shorn of prin- 
ciple, and the excesses of partisanship are thereby 


Without a Party 71 


increased, whereas constructive cooperation is de- 
creased. The grade of mind that is found in office 
is lower than it would be if great issues divided 
the parties, as in the days of Hamilton and Jefferson, 
Webster and Calhoun, Lincoln and Douglas. Even 
in the days of McKinley and Cleveland we thought 
we had an issue in the incidence of taxation, al- 
though it was largely an illusion. We have had to 
fight, as we saw the opportunity, for general pro- 
gressiveness of spirit and individual competence, 
and to prefer men to parties. When, in 1912, in 
the months preceding the nominations for the presi- 
dency, Mr. Charles R. Crane supported both Mr. 
LaFollette and Mr. Wilson he was showing an atti- 
tude, in view of the actual situation, corresponding 
to the one I have described as my own in the spring 
of 1920. 

In that same campaign of 1912, after the nomina- 
tions, some important matters were brought to an 
issue. Later some of them were disposed of. It 
differed from most other campaigns in that the 
issues were sharper, and that it therefore did some- 
thing to clear the air. I have never known a cam- 
paign, national or local, in which there was for a 
long time such a ground-swell of ethical enthusiasm. 
Persons, especially young persons, who had never 
taken a genuine interest in politics throbbed with 
enthusiasm. They believed indeed that they were 


72 The Advancing Hour 


at Armageddon, battling for the Lord. But this 
conviction gradually faltered as the campaign went 
on. The intellectual foundation was too weak. It 
was impossible to keep up the ethical fervor while 
remaining on the defensive on the two outstanding 
issues of the contest. Mr. Wilson, according to his 
wont, selected what he deemed the most important 
matters in sight and confined himself to them. The 
reactionary Republicans behind Taft were shown 
up in their impotence. The reactionary Democrats, 
already beaten at Baltimore, found that in Wilson 
they had a fighter on their hands, and the Bryan 
Democrats came to realize that a man could be 
well-trained, exact, and careful and at the same 
time radical. ‘The real issue was, which was the 
more forward party, Roosevelt’s or Wilson’s, and 
this had to be tested not by hymns but by measures. 
The Colonel, with all his energy and resourceful- 
ness, tried various issues, in the attempt to seize the 
offensive. He believed, with much reason, that if 
he could once become successfully launched he 
could start a prairie fire and win. Wilson, how- 
ever, ignored side issues, stuck to the tariff and the 
trusts, and thereby kept Roosevelt steadily on the 
defensive. On the defensive he could not win. As 
far as I know Mr. McAdoo first used the expres- 
sion “regulated competition instead of regulated 
monopoly,” but Mr. Brandeis certainly was the one 


Without a Party 73 


who worked it out most profoundly in that cam- 
paign, and Mr. Wilson kept the idea always in the 
foreground. Personally I was extremely excited 
about that particular issue, seeing in it the whole 
question of what path toward industrial democracy 
the nation would take in the future, and to that 
excitement I owe the honor of being selected by the 
Colonel for a place on the black list. I had been 
writing persistently on that issue throughout the 
campaign, as editor of Collier’s Weekly. When I 
left that publication, in October, 1912, the Colonel 
wrote: “In this campaign the Progressive party 
has suffered very grave harm through the perpetra- 
tion of an untruth as to its position on the regula- 
tion of trusts. This untruth has been disseminated 
through two channels, the editorial pages of 
Collier’s Weekly and the speeches of Woodrow 
Wilson.” 

Col. Roosevelt believed in size and trusted to 
Governmental regulation. I believed, on the other 
hand, that unless we could save the smaller units 
we must come to state bureaucracy, and was much 
influenced in this belief by the ablest arguments 
put out in that campaign on the trust issue, namely 
those of Mr. Brandeis. ‘That stirring thinker has 
never lost sight of the importance of size in mak- 
ing our industrial system a technical, intellectual, 
and moral success. ‘The choice between a wasteful 


74 The Advancing Hour 


and oppressive devil-take-the-hindmost point-of- . 
view on the one hand, and on the other a managing 
bureaucracy, with the individual pigeon-holed, has 
been a choice he has never been willing to make. 
His ideal has been the ideal of our forefathers, in- 
telligently adapted to the circumstances of our day. 
Naturally, therefore, some of his solidest and most 
expert thinking has been in demonstrating the 
wastefulness that results from big units, notably 
when size is attained not by successful growth but 
by the ability to bribe competitors out of existence. 
His long contest with the New Haven Railroad had 
many aspects, but two of his principles stand out as 
of most permanent importance. One was this un- 
willingness to see inefficiency succeed through the 
mere purchasing power of volume. The other was 
a fine old tradition, that the people of a locality 
should control their own affairs. ‘The New Haven 
merger was a threat not only to the efficiency of 
transit in New England but to the political free- 
dom of New England. Hence Mr. Brandeis’s hard 

fight against that merger. The same philosophy 
- was shown in his earlier work. In the Boston ele- 
vated case the idea on which he started to work out 
his plan was that Boston should retain control of 
her transportation system. In the practical appli- 
cation of that principle he put the expert study and 
the business mind that made the final arrangement 


Without a Party 75 


a success. There was the same thought in the now 
famous gas contract. Mr. Brandeis put through an 
arrangement by which the gas company was allowed 
to make a certain rate of profit as the price then 
stood. The quality, of course, was to remain uni- 
form, and every time that the price was reduced 
by a given amount to the consumer the company 
was permitted to make a higher profit. This 
ground-idea, that private enterprise should be al- 
lowed to reap liberal rewards for actual benefits to 
the community, but that the community should be 
carefully protected against exploitation, has been 
an outstanding principle with Mr. Brandeis. The 
over-simplifying conceptions of socialism have 
been antipathetic to him, as has their belief in big 
units and high centralization. 

I think Colonel Roosevelt never understood the 
importance of the distinction between these two 
approaches to the trust issue. His temper was sym- 
pathetic to huge forces and central control. Of 
the two sides of political truth represented by Alex- 
ander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, he saw only 
the Hamilton side, as his depreciations of Jefferson 
sufficiently attest. Not many Americans even to- 
day have well-worked-out beliefs about the proper 
place, in our approaching democracy, of private 
initiative, central political control, self-government 
by producers or distributors. This is natural 


76 The Advancing Hour 


enough. Our political poetry is still the poetry of 
the pioneer. Our epic is from the log cabin or 
the footpath to the White House, from office boy 
to millionaire. The total indifference to the future, 
shown by the way in which we controlled our lands, 
our minerals, our franchises, were our way of rfe- 
warding enterprise and vigor. If reaching across 
the continent to the Pacific Ocean hastily, instead 
of waiting for a normal growth, was the main de- 
sire, the rest followed logically. When I was a boy, 
something grandiose, noble even, seemed to inhere 
in the very idea of size. The burlesque toast, 
“Ffere’s to the United States, bordered on the North 
by the Aurora Borealis,” etc., was not an unfair 
parody. The hostility to the first faint protests of 
the less fortunate was confident and decisive. If 
laboring men desired shorter hours, it was to loaf; 
if more money, it was to drink; if they sought acts 
establishing employers’ liability, it was to cheat the 
employer through the workmen’s carelessness. If 
reformers sought to shake the absolute hold of in- 
dividuals on city water, gas, or traction, they were 
socialists. If they sought to plan our national land, 
forest, and mineral policy with an eye to the future, 
a Joe Cannon could say that posterity might take 
care of itself. 

Mark Hanna’s era marked the climax of this 
easy defiance by the strong. I well remember the 


Without a Party 77 | 


charming, bulldog manner in which Hanna took 
up the defense of unlimited private monopoly in 
reply to Mr. Bryan’s attacks on the trusts. It was 
a note that can never be sounded quite so fearlessly 
again. Even Mr. Gary has to watch a little, to 
catch the favorable moment, in order to get all of 
the great organs of established privilege on his 
side. Even he cannot be as gay as Hanna was. 
Surely history will be just to Col. Roosevelt. It 
will call him the first American of enormous popu- 
larity and ability to question the modern industrial 
system. As the pioneer he naturally, from our 
present point of view, did not go far. He was not 
a student of economics, and was unable to present 
the problem of the twentieth century. But he was 
a moralist, an educated man, a shrewd politician, 
and a hero. As far as his mind would carry him 
clearly, he would proceed with enormous vigor and 
courage. In proclaiming the application of ordi- 
nary morality to politics and business he did a 
creative work. He established one of the landmarks 
of American history. Three generations were 
stirred by him. Men now very old began to feel 
the thrill when he was only Civil Service Commis- 
sioner. Those now in middle life and the begin- 
nings of old age worked for him or against him in 
the many splendid contests of his Presidency, and 
the contests, not so splendid, that he carried on when 


78 The Advancing Hour 


out of office. Even those now in the twenties have 
felt the health of his rushing spirit. History will 
give serious attention to his record from his youth 
up to 1908. His railroad regulation, his fight to 
give power to the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion, may look slight to the eyes of 1920, but they 
were full of meaning when Roosevelt led those 
movements, and they were education to the coun- 
try. In other matters, such as the conservation of 
natural resources, in which he boldly risked his 
popularity in the West, his views were as advanced 
as those prevailing in liberal circles to-day. 
Around him grouped the earnestness and de- 
votion of aspiring American manhood. It was 
all that was needed then. In certain spots, like 
Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Oregon, various ex- 
periments in government were going on in advance 
of the national pace, but Roosevelt, in preparing 
the nation to venture on the application of ideas, 
was going as fast as the historic conditions called 
for. The group that followed him can fairly be 
called the liberal party of America, and while he 
was in power that group controlled the strongest 
of our parties. Perhaps, if he had run again in 
1908, and won, he would have kept pace with the 
times. Itishardtosay. But that leading the oppo- 
sition did not help him to formulate liberalism is_ 
clear. 


Without a Party 79 


At first it seemed as if it might. Mr. Taft, com- 
panionable and non-contentious—in Dolliver’s say- 
ing, ‘‘a large, good-natured body, entirely sur- 
rounded by men who know exactly what they want” 
—became an easy victim of the Aldrich, Smoot, 
Penrose, Lodge ring in the Senate and the Cannon 
ring in the House. He broke himself hopelessly 
on the piratic Aldrich bill and the Ballinger mis- 
adventure; that is to say, on tariff privileges and 
natural resources privileges. By the winter of 
1911-12, Mr. Taft had so entirely disappointed the 
Roosevelt wing of the party that the Colonel de- 
cided to run again, as he certainly could not have 
done if Mr. Taft’s record had been liberal. I had 
been a follower of the Colonel, on the whole, for a 
dozen years, and had become attached to him, as 
practically all of his followers were attached, by 
his ardor, courage, charm, and frequent bursts of 
genius. ‘Therefore when the parting of the ways 
presented itself to me it was in the nature of a 
tragedy. ‘There was no danger of my having to 
leave my party, for I had never had any party. It 
was a question of changing leaders. It was a ques- 
tion of deciding whether or not Theodore Roose- 
velt still represented the forward movement in 
America. This was in the winter or early spring 
of 1912, but I had already made up my mind that 
Wilson would be nominated. It was in the 


80 The Advancing Hour 


Colonel’s home at Oyster Bay, where I was spend- 
ing the night. 

‘Suppose,’ Mr. Roosevelt said suddenly, “that 
I am nominated by the Republicans in June, and 
Wilson by the Democrats; whom will you 
supporte” 

The situation was difficult, but the answer was 
easy. “If the Republicans take a progressive stand 
by nominating you, and the Democrats take a pro- 
gressive stand by nominating Wilson, my decision 
will be made on the platform, and primarily on 
those planks which deal with the tariff and the 
trusts.” 

The Colonel was silent. ‘The tariff and the 
trusts were not his natural fighting ground. He 
missed the nomination by a hair, bolted, and formed 
the Progressive or Bull Moose party. There was a 
fierce contest over these two planks, in which finally 
the will of George W. Perkins prevailed over the 
will of the majority of the convention: the trust 
plank being actually changed after it had been 
passed by the convention and sent to the press. It 
was an extraordinary performance, but not isolated 
in American development. Rather was it typical of 
the power and audacity of wealth. The same 
George W. Perkins seized control of the Mitchel 
campaign of 1917, and allowed nobody to be repre- 
sented in it except his friends. Probably such 


Without a Party 81 


amazing performances will take place as long as 
our liberal efforts depend merely on individuals. 

Although the campaign of 1912 brought out, 
especially from Mr. Brandeis, much profound 
treatment of the trust question it did not create any 
real issue between the parties. ‘That question re- 
mains in solution, waiting for some leader or lead- 
ers to tle up one party affirmatively with one or 
more of the various answers to it. 

Political philosophers argue perpetually about 
the degree to which individuals can influence the 
course of peoples. There is still a school in which 
history is treated as if it were little more than a 
series of battles and biographies. More in the in- 
tellectual fashion is the contrasting exaggeration, 
in which, carried along by the vague ideas of 
pseudo-science, we treat individual forces as negli- 
gible, swallowed altogether in the environment. 
No doubt in the long run it is the more general 
influences that persist. They reinforce the 
changes made by individuals or overcome them. 
But conditions are often uncertain and fluid and 
therefore within the control of strong men. The 
public is often like wax, to take and hold a shape 
given to it by an individual; or like sheep, ready 
to be led in more than one direction. Conditions 
control individuals and peoples, but men, some- 
times few in number, create conditions. Only the 


82 The Advancing Hour 


arbitrary insistence on a theory can lead us to deny 
serious influence to Jesus, Copernicus, Luther, 
Washington, Rousseau or Watts. Every man who 
helps so to build that an established civilization re- 
tains vitality or that a new civilization, or a new ele- 
ment in life, is made articulate and appealing, is a 
force in the world’s life. ‘To my mind the time 
has not yet come when the question of the man can, 
in this country at any rate, be subordinated. The 
man, in any Presidential election, ought to be the 
dividing issue now, until the party division takes 
on a real meaning. 

The Wilson record of constructive legislation 
from 1913 to 1917 was by far the most fundamental 
accomplished by any national administration since 
the civil war. Does this fact mean that the Demo- 
cratic party is the liberal party of the country, and 
that a person with ideas of fundamental progress 
can comfortably find his home there? I may illus- 
trate the difficulty by an incident that took place in 
a group of nine men in 1918, all of whom were 
unusually independent. We put the question: 
‘“‘Suppose you were compelled to decide now to vote 
the same ticket for twenty years. Which would you 
choose?” It was much to my surprise that all ex- 
cept one chose the Democratic ticket, not on any 
belief that Wilson or men like him could continue 
to dominate the party steadily, but along this line: 


Without a Party 83 


the Democratic party includes more of the very 
poor, and it is more complicated by the negro ques- 
tion in the South and the religious question in the 
North. These two burdens are heavy. The Repub- 
lican party is the party of heavy respectability and 
wealth, which is a more unmanageable burden even 
than those carried by the Democrats. 

This same question came up in the Presidential 
campaign of 1916, when it was my special duty to 
argue with the men who had been prominent Bull 
Moosers in 1912. We got a good many of them, 
mostly on the proof that Mr. Wilson was more rad- 
ical than Mr. Hughes, but we lost one of the 
strongest of them, after several weeks of argument, 
because he took the opposite view of the difficulties 
I have just mentioned. He is a good friend of 
mine; and he and [ talked at length off and on 
through weeks, but the gist of his conclusion was 
this: “I hope and believe Wilson will be elected. 
He is much more of a radical than Hughes and 
much more intelligent. But my decision cannot be 
made for 1916 alone. There are reasons why I can- 
not be a free lance like you, but must choose my 
party now, to work in it for perhaps twenty years. 
Thousands of young men will be affected by my de- 
cision. I must ask myself where these young men 
belong. I do not believe this country can best be 
conducted by a party containing three elements that 


84 The Advancing Hour 


I distrust. I do not like the influence of down-and- 
outers; I fear the effect that the race situation has 
on Southern opinion; and I prefer the Protestant 
conscience to the Catholic influence. ‘Therefore lL 
vote for Hughes, although preferring Wilson.” 
Not being much of a hand at generalizing about 
the respective merits of Southerners and Northern- 
ers, Catholics and Protestants, the failures as a class 
and the successful as a class, I cannot take seriously 
any of these arguments for any special lasting supe- 
riority in either of our parties. The party man, of 
course, if a person of ideals, hopes to do his bit 
toward drawing the great instrument his way. 
When I spoke to the President once about these 
difficulties, he made a real answer, as he always 
does. He replied that he hoped to see the Demo- 
cratic party large enough to control any reactionary 
or irresponsible elements it might have, and he has 
done a wonderful amount for modern liberalism; 
but has it affected his party in any important way? 
The two party system has its serious advantages. 
Through England’s modern history up to now it has 
‘seemed the best of political machines, and it was 
the failure of the liberals to show more depth in 
industrial matters, emphasized by their failure to 
show nobility and power in the war and the set- 
tlement, that caused so rapid a growth of the Labor 
Party. In the United States hitherto two parties 


Without a Party 85 


have sufficed. It seems likely, however, that to lead 
in the establishment of industrial democracy a new 
party may be required. Germany and France, for 
example, have required numerous groups to express 
adequately the various opinions. Habit and tradi- 
tion in the United States have more resemblance to 
England than to other countries, and it is at least 
probable that not more than three parties, possibly 
not more than two (if one reforms), will become 
strong enough to figure seriously in Congress. 
Unless the standpatters prevail mightily, there will 
not be much danger that non-parliamentary parties 
like some of the communists will grow strong. 
Unless these blind holders of power are able to 
exert pressure until there is an explosion the normal 
development may be hoped for, and the normal de- 
velopment will be the creation, by accretion or by: 
accident, of one party that fairly represents the lib- 
eral minds of the country, now divided up, being 
a minority among the Republicans, the Demo- 
crats, the Socialists, with a number who have re- 
mained independent because of the absence of a 
liberal party. Just what such a party will be like, 
if it is born, we cannot of course tell with exactness, 
but I think that before we get through this little 
book we can pick out the most important steps 
toward an industrial solution and at least hope that 
either a new party or just possibly one of the old 


86 The Advancing Hour 


parties may develop along those lines. If such a 
party showed vigor, I for one should feel compelled 
to join it, thus sacrificing to some extent a dearly- 
loved personal freedom. ‘The mere inclusion of 
some Marxian planks, such as the British Labor 
platform has, would not keep me away, if the im- 
mediate program and the general direction were 
right, for if we are to have political health there 
must be some party to represent social-industrial 
needs, and theories about remoter outcomes can be 
left to the cure of experience and the responsibilities 
of power. I should be forced to join such a party 
by belief in groping experience; in free, striving 
effort; by the same logic that led me from the be- 
ginning to favor a cure of Russian Bolshevism by 
non-intervention, and the resulting inevitable inter- 
nal changes, instead of by guns, gas and blockade 


CHAPTER V 
FACING BOLSHEVISM: OUR FOLLIES IN RUSSIA 


“Why, ’tis as easy as lying.” 
“Hamlet.” 


“We suppose that in all modern history there has 
never been a case of the suppression of the truth so 
general and so successful as the suppression of the 
truth about Bolshevism.” 

From “The New Statesman,” London. 


“The most fatal . . . errors of men are fre- 
quently the most excusable . . . They are 
committed when a strong impetus of right carries 
them up to a certain point, and a residue of that 
impetus, drawn from the contact with human pas- 
sion and infirmity, pushes them beyond it. They 
vault into the saddle, they fall on the other side. 
The instance most commonly present to my mind 1s 
the error of England in entering the revolutionary 
war inI793. Slow sometimes to goin, she 1s slower 
yet to come out, and tf she had then held her hand, 
the course of the revolution and the fate of Europe 
would tn all likelihood have been widely different. 
There might have been no Napoleon. There might 
have been no Sedan.” 

Gladstone. 


87 


88 The Advancing Hour 


OR a student of what constitutes news in 
* America, and particularly news in wartime, 

it would be interesting to find out how many 
American newspapers printed the letter of the lead- 
ing political thinker left alive from the old 
Russia, Prince Kropotkin, written to Georg 
Brandes on April 28, 1919, and published in 
Humanité on October roth. Kropotkin said: 
“We are now going through what France lived - 
through during the Jacobin revolution, from Sep- 
tember, 1792, to July, 1794, with the addition that 
now there is a social revolution that is seeking its 
path. 

“The dictatorship method of the Jacobins was 
false. It was unable to create a stable organization 
and it was inevitable that it should lead to reaction. 
But the Jacobins accomplished, nevertheless, in 
June, 1793, the abolition of feudal rights, which 
neither the Constituent Assembly nor the Legisla- 
tive Assembly was able to bring about. Also they 
proclaimed aloud the political equality of all citi- 
zens. These were two immense fundamental 
changes which in the course of the nineteenth cen- 
tury made the tour of Europe. 

“An analogous fact is now coming into being in 
Russia. The Bolsheviks are undertaking to intro- 
duce, by the dictatorship of a fraction of the Social- 
Democratic party, socialization of land, industry, 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 89 


and commerce. The change which they are under- 
taking to bring about is the fundamental principle 
of Socialism. Unhappily, the method by which 
they undertake to enforce, in a strongly centralized 
state, a communism recalling that of Babeuf— 
which is paralyzing the constructive work of the 
people—this method renders success absolutely im- 
possible. It paves the way for a furious, wicked 
reaction. This reaction is already attempting to or- 
ganize itself to bring back the old régime, taking 
advantage of the general exhaustion, caused at first 
by the war, then by the famine that we are under- 
going in central Russia, and by the complete 
disorganization of trade and production, which was 
inevitable during a revolution as vast as this, 
brought about by issuing decrees. 

“Tn the west there is talk of reéstablishing ‘order’ 
in Russia by an armed intervention of the allies. 
Well, dear friend, you know how criminal toward 
all the social progress of Europe was, in my opinion, 
the attitude of those who sought to disorganize Rus- 
sia’s resisting power; an act which prolonged the 
war by a year, gave us the German invasion under 
cover of a treaty, and required rivers of blood to 
prevent a conquering Germany from crushing 
Europe under her imperial boot. You well know 
my feelings about this. Nevertheless I protest with 
all my ability against every kind of armed interven- 


90 The ‘Advancing Hour 


‘tion by the allies in Russian affairs. Such an 
intervention would cause an access of Russian 
jingoism. It would bring back a jingo monarchy 
(there are already signs of it), and take good notice 
of this, it would cause in the Russian people as a 
whole a hostile attitude toward occidental Europe, 
an attitude which would have sad consequences. 
The Americans have already understood this. 

“Tt is imagined, perhaps, that in supporting 
Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin, support is 
being given to the liberal, to the republican element. 
But that is an error. Whatever may be the personal 
intentions of these two chieftains those around them 
have other plans. Inevitably what they would 
bring us would be a return to monarchy, to reaction, 
and to further streams of blood. 

“. . . Instead of playing the part that Aus- 
tria, Prussia,.and Russia played toward France in 
1793, the allies should have done everything possi- 
ble to help the Russian people out of this terrible 
Situation. . . . It is in building a new future, 
by the constructive working out of a new life, in 
spite of everything, that the allies should help us. 
Without delay, come to the help of our children. 
Come to help us in the needed constructive work. 
For this help, send us not diplomats and generals, 
but bread, tools for production, and organizers, who 
were so well able to assist the allies during these 


. P - s . £ 
ee eS ee 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 91 


terrible five years in preventing economic disorgani- 
zation, and in repelling the barbarous invasion of 
the Germans.” 

In discussing political tendencies and difficulties 
we can seek a formal simplicity, a consistency of 
words, or we can endeavor rather to follow the 
actual working of the human mind, which is far 
from thinking with the narrower consistency. 
Russia may seem a long distance from trusts, labor 
parties, lack of significance in our party divisions. 
But if you are accustomed to talking with a number 
of active-minded young men, in college and re- 
cently out of it, you will not find it so. If you are 
accustomed to addressing audiences of people who 
earn their wages from day to day you will not find 
it so. To the mentally active young, and to ques- 
tioning labor, Russia is indeed what President 
Wilson, in that phrase of inspiration, called it. It 
is the “‘acid test.” It tests our economic standpoint. 
It tests our political sincerity. It tests the New 
York Assembly and the Attorney General of the 
United States. It tests the efficiency of our knowl- 
edge and of our wisdom. It tests our adequacy to 
build a new material welfare in Europe. It tests 
our ability to devise the right remedies for the 
momentous stirring everywhere that we loosely call 
Bolshevism. We call it Bolshevism, whether it is 
aimless dissent, tired nervousness, or lucid striving 


92 The Advancing Hour 


for equality. The name has come to cover the 
things of which we are most afraid. We must face 
the Russian situation or we cannot face the home 
situation. And this is true everywhere: in Eng- 
land, Germany, Italy, France, Poland even 
America. 

One of the most prevalent and tiresome faults of 
liberals and intellectual radicals is putting em- 
phasis on the faults that have been made by those 
in authority, without offering any definite and exact 
substitutes. here are circumstances in which, how- 
ever one may wish to avoid the error of censure in 
excess, the rational policy can have its elementary 
foundation only by a vivid understanding of the 
falsity, evil or unsoundness of the present system. 
This need of complete exposure will occur espe- 
cially in complex and fluid circumstances, of great 
importance; and still more especially if the public 
mind has been drugged into a wholly unreal con- 
ception of the facts involved. Such a situation is 
presented in Russia. If the faults of the big west- 
ern governments in their treatment of the Commun- 
ist threat had been such as were entirely unlikely to 
recur there would be little use in setting down the 
folly with which frightened capital muddled the 
Russian situation. It will be years, however, before 
conditions in Russia receive an unmistakable stamp, 
and for years, therefore, we shall be deciding and 


oe eS 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 98 


re-deciding the exact degree of hypocrisy, fear, and 
force on which we are to rely. 

In the early months of 1918 I began to urge on 
my friends in office, and on others, the belief that 
the best hope of a solution in Russia lay in the great 
cooperative associations. Old political divisions 
had been rendered almost meaningless. People still 
talked about Kadets and Octobrists and Socialist 
Revolutionaries, but the only important political 
divisions were the Bolsheviks, the Czarists, and a 
miscellaneous group who were neither. New po- 
litical divisions would have to come with time, and 
respond to the needs of a new time. Meantime the 
actual Russian masses were expressing themselves, 
not politically, but in their daily business. A large 
part of their necessary production, and a larger 
part of their necessary distribution, were being car- 
ried on by institutions that were old, familiar, and 
persistent through political upheaval. ‘These great 
cooperative institutions represented, in my opinoin, 
the actual life of Russia, and I thought that if we 
could break through political divisions and estab- 
lish contact with them we might be on the track of 
doing something. About a year later I went to 
Denmark, as Minister, mainly because of the belief 
that I could from Copenhagen get much more light 
on the Russian problem than I could from the 
United States. While I was getting ready to sail 


94 The Advancing Hour 


Mr. Alexander Berkenheim came to the United 
States. He brought a letter from Prince 
Kropotkin to a public-spirited American, who re- 
ferred Mr. Berkenheim to me. Later history has 
shown how fully Mr. Berkenheim represented the 
Russian codperatives, and the best in Russia. I in- 
troduced him to powerful political people here and 
urgently repeated my beliefs about the codpera- 
tives. 

Russia and the whole world had suffered inde- 
scribably from an ignorant and meddlesome policy 
for many sad months before I went to Denmark. 
It was not long after my return that Paris finally 
took the first step toward burying its suicidal policy 
and entered into a contract to trade with Mr. Berk- 
enheim. Our newspapers, busy about other things, 
gave such incomplete accounts of this historic trans- 
action that I give the documents at the end of this 
chapter. 

As far as I can tell in May, 1920, the step was 
taken too late. ‘The Communists would have been 
too weak to oppose the cooperatives up to the late 
fall of 1919. Now they seem strong enough to 
“nationalize” them, and the obvious efforts of the 
Entente to interfere in every guise has strengthened 
the extremer elements. 

Why was it necessary to go through such incred- 
ible errors and sufferings? ‘The first symptoms of 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 95 


governmental myopia began with the first revolu- 
tion, in March, 1917. J was at the British front 
at the time. Military men were nervous, naturally, 
and they could not be expected to feel what an enor- 
mous part of the effort to make the world safe for 
democracy had been or should have been, success- 
ful when one of the two strongest despotisms in the 
world had been suddenly changed into a self-gov- 
erning country. When I first went to London, how- 
ever, and read the official expressions of confidence 
in the Czar, and sympathy with him, and the cold 
references to the perfectly orderly undertaking of 
constitutional government I felt that blight of the 
official mind which we have all felt so many times 
in these years of test and disillusion. The Lvov 
government speedily found itself too conservative to 
meet the new needs, and Kerenski, as the most rad- 
ical member of that government, was spontaneously 
lifted to the first place. Whether he could have 
weathered the storm had the powers treated him 
intelligently can never be known, but they did treat 
him both blindly and dishonestly. He told them 
that Russia could no longer fight, unless war aims 
were restated in non-imperialistic form, in such a 
way that Germany could either accept them, and 
thus gain nothing from the war except disillusion, 
or reject them, and thus put Russia in a situation 
where she could probably be kept in the war. He 


96 The Advancing Hour 


favored the Stockholm conference, and because Mr. 
Arthur Henderson told the truth about Kerenski’s 
views Mr. Lloyd George tried to convince the Brit- 
ish public that Mr. Henderson was a liar. 

The Bolshevik seizure of power followed. We 
soon took our part in the misrepresentations that 
filled the world. The distribution of blame for our 
part in the tragedy it would not be becoming in me 
to make. Some of our leading men have a good 
record regarding Russia, others a reactionary rec- 
ord, and many have seemed merely at sea or asleep. 
But I should feel a coward if I did not speak what 
I think about the conduct of all the governments. 

As to the ultimate effect of the propaganda of 
atrocities, of which all the nations were guilty, the 
most effective comment J have seen was that of 
Norman Angell, in the London Herald, an organ 
of the Labor Party. Mr. Angell said: 

“Assume, if you will, that all these stories—of the 
German atrocities during the war, of the Russian 
atrocities that we are now exploiting—are true, 
practically every one of them. Nevertheless, we 
are using them in such a way as to make of them a 
gross falsehood and to involve injustice, dishonesty, 
degradation to ourselves, and a perversion of policy 
for which our country is destined one day to pay a 
very bitter price. Let the thing be made plain by a 
very concrete illustration. 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 97 


“Here is an atrocity story about whose authentic- 
ity I will say nothing till I have given it in full: 

“In a large provincial town two “bourgeois,” 
vaguely charged with counter-revolution, were 
seized by local Bolshevik bands, taken into the town 
square, where thousands of Bolshevik adherents 
witnessed, not only with no protest but with jeers 
and execration, the following: ‘The two prisoners 
were first bound; their tongues were then slowly 
torn out with pincers; hot irons were then brought 
and each living eyeball slowly burned. They were 
then stripped, and with other hot irons unnamable 
mutilations were inflicted. A fire was then lit, and 
what remained of the tortured and quivering, but 
living, flesh was thrown upon the fire and slowly 
roasted to death. This crowd of Bolsheviks—some 
thousands of them—then set up the cry that the 
wives of these hated bourgeois should be treated in 
the same fashion. One of them was found. She 
happened to be pregnant. She was seized, stripped, 
tied by her feet to the branch of a tree in the square, 
obscenely mutilated, and then also burned alive. 

What makes the thing particularly damning are 
two facts. First, that these incredible tortures were 
committed with the full knowledge of, were wit- 
nessed indeed by, the local “authorities.” Secondly, 
that the Central Soviet and Lenin himself were 
made acquainted with what had taken place. The 


98 The Advancing Hour 


Bolshevik press published accounts of the incident. 
And some individual Bolsheviks of the more intel- 
lectual type were bold enough to ask Lenin to re- 
ceive a deputation to discuss whether the Central 
Soviet could not stop the acquiescence of the local 
Soviet authorities in this sort of thing. Lenin re- 
‘plied he was too busy to receive a deputation on 
such a subject.’ | 

‘Here, then, is an atrocity, apparently better sub- 
stantiated than the extremely dubious stories of the 
very anonymous British officer now being exploited 
by the ‘Times,’ the ‘Daily Mail,’ and the ‘Weekly 
Dispatch.’ 

“You will say: A political or social theory which 
leads men to acts of that kind should be stamped 
out by the combined force of civilization; a Gov- 
ernment which can tolerate it should have no recog- 
nition from civilized men. 

“Well, I do not draw that conclusion from the 
story of this atrocity. Nor will you, nor would 
Lord Northcliffe, when one additional fact is told. 
The abominations just described took place, not in 
Russia, but in America—in Texas. I have merely 
described a lynching, which the press of the South- 
ern States will duplicate for you almost any week 
in the year, using ‘Bolshevik’ to describe the 
Southern White, ‘Soviet’ the Southern local au- 
thorities,.etc. ‘The details are typical of many 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 99 


_lynchings, the facts of which have been carefully 
verified by the National Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Colored People. The outrages in the 
cases I have in mind were committed in the pres- 
ence of thousands; the local authorities were fully 
aware of them; the Federal Government was in- 
formed; it has again and again refused to intervene, 
though when it is a question of arresting Labor 
agitators, any constitutional obstacles to Federal 
action within individual states is swept away in a 
twinkling. When, after the East St. Louis pogrom, 
in which 120 negro men, women, and children were 
massacred, a delegation of negroes asked to see 
President Wilson, he was too busy. 

“Those crimes are numbered by hundreds and 
thousands; have gone on, not in the midst of the 
passions of war, but in the quiet and security of 
country towns as ordinary things, almost normal to 
life in certain of the American States. And they 
go on against a race that has never risen in rebel- 
lion; is unarmed, and whose very presence on 
American soil is testimony, not to any fault of theirs, 
but to a monstrous crime of the Anglo-Saxon race 
whose members inflict the torture—the African 
slave-catching which our forefathers carried out. 

“Ts the parallel close enough? 

“Why are we right then in not letting a thing so 
abominable stand in the way of our friendship with 


100 The Advancing Hour 


America? Because the American people are capa- 
ble of a good deal more than lynching abomina- 
tions) ‘They show daily, in numberless circum- 
stances, humanity and generosity, kindliness, and 
idealism; and the truth, and our treatment of them, 
demands that if in justice we condemn the evil we 
take account also of the good—and remember the 
evil that is in ourselves. 

“Tmagine that we had drifted from commercial 
jealousy of America into our third war with her. 
From that moment these people, who, in the South 
at least, are of our blood, would become, not peo- 
ple very like ourselves, but merely lynchers. The 
lynching horrors would rapidly become our normal 
picture of American society and character. 

“And the picture is utterly false. If side by side 
with every story of cruelty by a German or Russian 
we placed first the numberless acts of kindness, hu- 
manity, and even heroism, which in the past Rus- 
sians and Germans have done for our people; if by 
the side of every atrocity of which we accuse them 
we had to place every atrocity of which they can 
accuse us or our allies—the severity which marked 
in the early days the invasion of East Prussia, the 
conduct of the blacks employed by France, the chil- 
dren we have killed with our blockades (even after 
the war was ended), the sort of things our own sol- 
diers (e.g., Mr. Stephen Graham) calmly relate in 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follics in Russia 101 


their own books—if these things were also told we 
could not use atrocity stories in the way we do. We 
should not draw the conclusions that we do. We 
should see that these abominations, past and pres- 
ent, are not crimes which we must impute to some 
special wickedness in Germans, Russians, Ameri- 
cans, Belgian, French, Catholic Inquisitor, Protes- 
tant Conqueror, but to evil and the misguided pas- 
sions common to mankind; to the obscene lusts of 
violence which, once let loose and placed at the 
service of myopic tribal instincts, of a perverted 
nationalism, of race hatred, mob passion, and de- 
testation of the heretic political or religious, render 
their victims blind, deaf, hardly conscious. 

“This temper that we are now cultivating may 
easily be transferred to the conflict of the classes. 
Those who now fight this exploitation of hate will 
be blamed for its inevitable results in the class war, 
and blamed by those who have deliberately culti- 
wated the passions that will have made those results 
inevitable. 

“This ‘falsification by atrocity’ is enveloping the 
world in hate and fear and the passion of vengeance, 
destroying all the courageous idealism that should 
inspire the new time. It is blinding us to the right 
policy for our country, and is of infinite menace to 
our national safety and our social welfare.” 

War can pay its measureless cost only if the world 


102 The Advancing Hour 


is shocked inte change of heart. Several years of 
starvation and semi-starvation in Europe may cre- 
ate a deep-lying moral revolt against the persistence 
of outlived sanctions, of decayed beliefs, of which 
we had been promised that victory should mean 
their end. ‘The instinctive, cohesive capitalist war 
against Russia must in the near future be seen in all 
its starkness. Why, since the autumn of 1917, has 
such passion gone to blackening indiscriminately 
the character of the Bolshevik leaders? I do not 
myself believe in their doctrines, but why do we 
need an orgy of misrepresentation? ‘The violence 
is not inferior to that which led us to depict all 
Germany as Hun. We enjoy being cruel to our 
enemies of the moment, but the cruellest of all im- 
pulses is fear, and we seem to fear that if the de- 
bates were conducted honestly on our side the com- 
munist lure might seduce our masses. We do not 
care to realize that if we cannot win against com- 
munism honestly we cannot win at all. I believe 
we could win honestly because I believe extreme 
communism, especially communism by force, is un- 
sound. 

The Sisson documents were, in their total history, 
certainly not less disgraceful than the manifestos of 
the German professors. History will dismiss them 
in a line without serious comment, except by special 
students of war morals. In a treatise by some fu- 


Facing Bolshevism: Our.Follies in Russia 108 


ture investigator on fictions of the world-war, they 
might hold a distinguished place. This future ex- 
cavator of ideas will look back with at least the 
pleasure of irony on the fact that those cheap for- 
geries were sent over the United States as propa- 
ganda, supported by the name of a historian in high 
standing and a professor of Russian in a great uni- 
versity. If the British newspapers refused to print 
them, it was not so much because of superior morals 
as because many of the same documents had been 
printed in France and discredited many months be- 
fore. 

At the time of their appearance, if you wished 
to damn a group, you called it pro-German; so these 
documents proceeded to produce an inhumanly 
complete dossier, which dossier seemed to have been 
carefully prepared by the Bolshevik leaders, and 
reduced to writing, without a flaw in the evidence, 
to furnish complete demonstration of their venality 
and their subservience to Germany. It was before 
General von Hoffman said that Foch might think 
himself the conqueror of Germany if he liked, but 
that the real victor over her was Lenin. It was be- 
fore Ludendorff’s memoirs, in spite of his satisfac- 
tion over Brest-Litovsk, unwittingly confirmed 
Hoffman’s view of the part Bolshevik thought 
played in the crumbling of German _ disci- 
pline. The anti-Bolshevik propagandists, at the 


104 The Advancing Hour 


time of the Sisson publication, required something 
intense Lenin’s reported saying, ‘I made the Rus- 
sian revolution with German gold, and I shall make 
the German revolution with Russian gold,” may be 
apocryphal or true; but in any case, that point of 
view would not have been strong enough. So we 
made what we required. 

Evidence is strong that, if the Entente had been 
willing to express democratic war-aims during the 
preliminaries to Brest-Litovsk, the Germans would 
have rejected the terms and the Soviets would have 
cooperated with the Entente. The situation in this 
respect was similar to the situation at the time that 
Kerenski, knowing of the secret treaties, so plead- 
ingly sought from the Entente such a revision of 
war aims as might have led either to peace or to a 
lining-up of the Russian proletarian and peasant 
consciences on the side of the Entente. The red- 
blooded elements in the Entente countries would 
have none of either of these mollycoddle proposals. 
They preferred to lead Europe to where she stands 
now. Had it been only the real faults of Bolshev- 
ism that stirred us—dictatorship, despotic bureau- 
cracy, theories simplified beyond life—I do not 
think gross falsehood would have been required. 
The governments of the world were combined 
against one wearied and demoralized government. 
They furnished soldiers against it until their people 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 105 


told them that they would not stand for such per- 
sonal inconvenience as sending soldiers; thereafter 
they furnished guns, tanks, poison gas and news- 
paper stories. They put on the blockade, which fell 
last of all on the army. Sometimes it seemed they 
would have been willing to starve every woman and 
child in Russia rather than allow a communist des- 
potism to take its chances with its own population. 
Of course, the intervention and blockade were 
cloaked in proclamations about atrocities, but does 
there exist one sane being blind enough to pretend 
that if there had been a de facto government, equally 
despotic and equally repressive, but conservative, 
the world would have coalesced with such excite- 
ment to put it down, with no declaration of war and 
no submission of the question to peoples or even to 
parliaments? ‘The question answers itself. It was 
a class war, and to deck it up in moral principles is 
the greatest of all the hypocrisies that corroded our 
victory. Nor is there any more honesty in the ex- 
cuse that it was a war of defense, in the plain sense 
of those words, for the willingness of the Bolsheviki 
to stop fighting external enemies if they could be 
left to their task of organization at home was over- 
whelmingly proved for those who were willing to 
believe. 

The final excuse was “standing by our friends.” 
We did not have to stand by Kerenski or any of our 


106 The Advancing Hour 


friends except those who wished to intervene; nor 
did we count among our friends the millions whose 
sons and brothers had been thrown recklessly against 
death machines until the peaceful soul of the vast 
peasant-country cried aloud for peace and land as 
against all the tinsel of the empire seekers, the so- 
called leaders of parties, the vendors of heroic 
words. | 

No wonder old Kropotkin, who disliked Bolshev- 
ism, sided nevertheless with it against outside sav- 
agery. No wonder the most distinguished writers 
in France spoke in accents of horror. No wonder 
that Henderson, when he put the horrible cruelty 
and hypocrisy of the Russian policy fairly before a 
British electorate, was sent triumphantly to parlia- 
ment. No wonder that Lloyd George spoke of the 
inhumanity and the egregious folly of that policy, 
always except when he needed the blood-lust in elec- ~ 
tions or in retaining power, and took the lead in 
raising the blockade when he could control his coun- 
try and his allies. For nearly two years all the 
machinery of life was bent to one end: it was better 
that a million innocents should starve than that a 
communistic experiment should be allowed to pro- 
ceed more rapidly to its inevitable collapse or modi- 
fication. 

To a man I trust I explained my belief that Bol- 
shevism was a war-phenomenon, not a _ peace- 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 107 


phenomenon; that if we had treated it in a neutral 
spirit, or even in the friendly spirit we showed to 
the government of the Czar, it could not have lasted 
a fraction of the time that it lasted in arms against 
the world. I quoted this conversation that I had in 
1918 with an economic thinker: 

I: “Suppose you were able to dictate the way 
we should treat Lenin, what would your policy be?” 

He: “I would give him everything he wanted. 
It is the only way to end him.” 

Of course this thinker meant that discontent is 
cured by intercourse and responsibility. “The man 
to whom I repeated the conversation neither ac- 
cepted nor denied my contentions, but showed that 
he had something in the back of his head. So I 
said: “Men of your philosophy have had the con- 
duct of the war, and the conduct of this Russian 
adventure. How do you like the world that you 
have created?” 

“At least,” he replied, “‘we have retained our self- 
respect.” 

Is it not epice I must recall now the appeal that 
was most primitive, alongside the tales of pro-Ger- 
manism, mutilations, and soon. It was the woman- 
note, the challenge to the protecting instinct of the 
male, that must be sounded, as it was sounded 
against Germany, as the British sounded it against 
the Boers, as it has been used in all the civilized 


108 The Advancing Hour 


wars in history. The more Russian women are 
starved, the more necessary it becomes to prove that 
the Bolsheviki treat women wickedly. So we 
seized upon the nationalization of women. Evi- 
dence that women held a higher position in Bol- 
shevik Russia than in Germany, France, England, 
or America, could get little attention. Many ex- 
planations of how the story started have been given. 
Here are three given to me by Americans who were 
in Russia at the time or soon after: 

(1) When the Bolsheviki gave the full vote to 
women the Mohammedan world was shocked, and 
used an expression which was translated back into 
some language as the nationalization of women. 

(2) A barber went crazy in Odessa and promul- 
gated such a decree. He was promptly sent to an 
asylum. 

(3) A comic paper in Petrograd wrote a parody 
of communist ideas. 

The British War Office presumably knew by 
August, 1919, not only the falsity of the charge, but 
also the fact that the Bolshevik laws of marriage, 
divorce, women’s labor, women’s pay, women’s po- 
litical rights, are more enlightened than those pre- 
vailing in the West. But in August, 1919, wishing 
to induce British boys to go to kill Russians, it 
issued a pamphlet. Did it tell the truth as a basis 
for their volunteering? No, it relied on two argu- 


——_ eee 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 109 


ments; in both cases showing at the same time a 
sufficient knowledge of their falsity. In the lan- 
guage is an avoidance of the specific charge that the 
Bolsheviki were bribed by the Germans, while 
enough is clung to for purpose of instigation. ‘There 
is likewise an avoidance of the specific charge of 
nationalization of women by the central govern- 
ment, while there is a mean clinging to it by charg- 
ing that it occurred in places not named, and there- 
fore beyond proof. ‘This document bears the fol- 
lowing title-page: 

NOTES FOR PERSONNEL 
VOLUNTEERING FOR SERVICE 
With the 
BRITISH MILITARY MISSION 
in 
SOUTH RUSSIA 
(Issued by the General Staff) 

WAR OFFICE (S. E. 2.). August, 1919. 
Extracts from it are (with italics by me): 
BOLSHEVISM 


1. What is now known as Bolshevism developed 
from a small band of extreme Socialists who lived 
in Switzerland and were sent into Russia by the 
German General Staff through Germany and Swe- 
den as soon as it was realized that the Russian Pro- 


110 The Advancing Hour 


visional Government was determined to prosecute 
the war. Though this party had nothing in com- 
mon with Imperial Germany, it was content to take 
German money and play Germany’s game in order 
to get hold of the reins of authority in Russia. 

2. It defeated the Provisional Government of 
Kerenski, and came in on the cry of “Peace, Land, 
Freedom and Bread.” It has given Russia none of 
these things; zt cared for none of them. ‘They were 
merely the lure to attract to its side the peasants 
and workmen, so as, with them, to destroy entirely 
the existing organization. 

3. The genuine Bolsheviks are mostly non-Rus- 
sian internationalists. ‘Their creed is that the world 
has made such a mess of Christian civilization, that 
the latter must be stamped out. ‘They hold that the 
root of all evil is the sense of possession, and that 
this sense is fostered by the ideas of nationality and 
family. 

4. Their program is to eradicate by means of 
revolution in every country these ideas of nationality 
and family. 

5. In Russia they are not only endeavoring to 
annihilate the existing possessing classes, but are 
deliberately trying to ensure that the new genera- 
tion shall grow up free from all ideas of possession. 

6. The well-known decree for the nationalization 
of women did not come from the Central Bolshevik 
Government, but it has been put into force in several 
towns. By this decree all women were forced to 
report at a ““commissariat of free love,” where they 
might be selected by any man, and had no right to 
refuse. 

7. The decree for the nationalization of children 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 111 


provided that all children over five became the 
property of the State. 

8. Having originally protested against the bru- 
tality of the death sentence in the old army, they 
have reintroduced, not only death for desertion, but 
also death without trial for other offences com- 
mitted by their conscripts, and they shoot the wives 
and families, and sometimes even large numbers of 
the fellow villagers, of deserters. 

g. The Bolshevism they preach in foreign coun- 
tries is very different to what they practice in Rus- 
sia, but we must realize that it is what they prac- 
tice that they wish to introduce among us. 


This is cock-sure enough. I compare it with the 
account in the London Times of November 18, 
1919, of a speech by Labor Leader Arthur Hender- 
son in the House of Commons: ‘For about ten 
months organized labor in this country had been 
appealing to the government to provide facilities 
for a commission to visit Russia to ascertain the 
facts concerning the situation, and that request had 
been denied. Passports had been refused to a depu- 
tation from the International Conference repre- 
senting the organized working classes of nearly 
every country in the world.” 

But even if it did take all possible steps to pre- 
vent information from being obtained, the War 
Office, before it issued the warlike appeal for Deni- 
kin volunteers, must have known something about 


112 The Advancing Hour 


the attitude of the Bolsheviki toward family rela- 
tions. 

It was in February, 1919, that the Russian In- 
formation Bureau in England issued the following 
document: 


“Numerous conflicting and absurd reports have 
been widely circulated in this country to the effect 
that marriage as hitherto known has been virtually 
abolished in Soviet Russia. It is alleged on the one 
hand that women are socialized and that a woman 
may be seized by any man who desires her. On 
the other hand it is said that any woman of twenty- 
one may have any man she chooses. New Europe 
for October 31, 1918, appears to have set the ball 
rolling by an article entitled, “The Bolsheviks and 
the Status of Women.’ This article contained what 
is stated to be a translation of a decree issued by the 
Bolsheviks of Vladimir and ‘published in the offi- 
cial Soviet organ, Isvestija.’ Neither the date of 
the decree nor that of its publication in the Isvestija 
was given by New Europe. 

‘The New Europe also referred to ‘the socializa- 
tion of women in the city of Hoolinsky, and vicin- 
ity,’ which, it says, has been published in the local 
Gazette of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. 
Again no dates are given. There is no such city in 
Russia as Hoolinsky. 

“The origin of these fables can be traced to 
Maxim Gorki’s paper, the Novaya Zhizn, which 
was at one time a violent and unscrupulous op- 
ponent of the Soviets, though Gorky has since re- 
canted and issued to the world a glowing eulogy of 
the Bolsheviki and joined the Soviet administra- 


eC 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 118 


tion. In the early summer of 1918 the Novaya 
Zhizn republished an article written by a woman 
on freer sexual relationships which had been pub- 
lished by the Isvestija, or News, of a small, local 
Soviet at Vladimir, in a Far-Eastern province. 
Gorki’s paper, instead of treating it as a freak, 
quoted it as an instance of Bolshevik rule. 

“The actual law relating to marriage and parent- 
age passed by the Soviet Government for all Russia 
provides the best answer to the slanders which are 
being circulated. It will be seen that the main dif- 
ference between the Soviet law and our own is that 
illegitimate children have the same claim upon their 
parents as legitimate children.” 


The Bureau then quoted the Soviet Marriage 
Law, as follows: 


“The Russian Republic recognizes as legal civil 
marriages only. 

“The following are the regulations concerning 
civil marriages: 

‘“t, Persons intending to marry must notify either 
verbally or in writing the registry office for mar- 
riages and for births, attached to the county, dis- 
trict, or parish council, in the district of their 
abode. 

“NOoTE.—Civil marriage is absolutely obligatory. 
The additional performance of a church ceremony 
is the private affair of the individuals concerned. 

‘>, Notifications of marriages are not accepted: 

(a) From males under 18 years of age and 
from females under 16 years of age. For the 
natives of Transcaucasus the legal age for mar- 


114 The Advancing Hour 


riage is 16 years of age for males and 13 years 
of age for females. 

(b) From relatives of lineal descent, brothers 
and sisters, half-brothers and _ half-sisters. 
These regulations apply to relatives of a sim- 
ilar degree even though one or both the parties 
were born outside wedlock. 

(c) From married persons, and 

(d) From lunatics. 

2, It is necessary for those intending to marry to 
call at the registry office for marriages and to sign 
a form declaring that they are free from impedi- 
ments to marriage cited in Article 2 of this decree, 
and further that the marriage is a voluntary act on 
their part. 

“Persons deliberately making false statements 
concerning the non-existence of the impediments 
stated in Article 2 will be proceeded against for 
making these false declarations and their marriages 
declared void. 

“a, The officer in charge at the registry office for 
marriages, after obtaining the required signatures, 
enters the fact in the registry book and then de- 
clares the marriage already to be in force. 

“Tn entering upon wedlock the couple may freely 
decide what surname they will adopt, the name of 
the husband, the name of the wife, or the joint sur- 
name of both. 

“To prove the performance of the marriage, a 
copy of the marriage license is issued immediately 
and given to the couple. 

‘‘s. Appeals against refusal to perform the mar- 
riage ceremony, Or against any irregularity in the 
entry in the register, can be made at any time to the. 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 115 


local judge in the district where the marriage was 
registered, and the decision of the local judge can 
be appealed against in the ordinary legal way. 

“6. If the register of marriage should be de- 
stroyed, or lost in any other way, or if married 
couples are for any other reason unable to obtain a 
.copy of their marriage license, the persons con- 
cerned are entitled within a certain date to make a 
statement concerning their marriage at the registry 
office of the district where they both live, or where 
either party lives. They must again give their sig- 
nature, as required by Article 4 of this Decree, and 
also in addition must sign a statement that the book 
has been lost, or that for some other reason worthy 
of consideration, they are unable to obtain their 
marriage license. This will be considered as suffi- 
cient ground for reéntering the marriage and for 
again issuing a copy of the marriage certificate. 

‘7. ‘The birth of a child must be registered at the 
registry office of marriages and births in the dis- 
trict in which the mother resides. The birth of 
each child must be separately registered. 

“8. The birth of a child must be notified at the 
local registry office by one or both parents, or, in 
case of the parents’ death, by the person who is in 
charge of the newly-born child. The name and sur- 
name of the child must be given and two witnesses 
must attest the birth. 

“9. The registers of marriages and births are kept 
in duplicate; at the end of twelve months one copy 
is to be transmitted for preservation to the appro- 
priate Court. 

“to. Illegitimate children are to be treated in the 
same manner as legitimate children in regard to 


116 The Advancing Hour 


their rights and obligations towards their parents 
and the rights and obligations of the parents 
towards these children. 

“The persons who notify, and give their signa- 
tures as the parents of the child, are recognized as 
the father and mother of the child. 

“Tn case of an illegitimate child, where the father 
omits to give the above-mentioned notification, the 
mother, the guardian, or the child has the legitimate 
right to prove the paternity.” 


To discuss such general charges as that the Ger- 
mans were Huns, or that the Bolsheviki were not a 
fanatic sect but a group of brigands seeking ex- 
cuses for plunder can be done adequately only some 
years from now, when more facts are available, and 
when the world is willing to consider all the diffi- 
culties of assuming the reins of government when 
the war spirit of the country was completely broken, 
as Kerenski had seen; when transport and general 
industry were disorganized; when Russia politi- 
cally was hopelessly broken into irreconcilable 
groups; to fight under those conditions for over two 
years, against the Germans, Chekho-Slovak armies, 
the various Russian armies, the Japanese, the Brit- 
ish, the French, the Americans, the Poles, and vari- 
ous border states; to have to manage transportation - 
and industry without the coal-fields and the oil- 
wells; to be prevented from buying the machinery 
and parts of machinery not produced in Russia. 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 117 


What I think of dictatorship by the proletariat 
scarcely needs further elaboration, but my disbelief 
in that doctrine never made me happy in blockades, 
invasions, and campaigns of calumny. ‘That 
brigands were at large in Russia there is no doubt; 
that their power became greater as the situation be- 
came worse is clear; but to charge the original Bol- 
shevik national leaders with low motives is simply 
to prostitute our own minds. Krassin’s work must 
have been uncommonly efficient. It is certain that 
no more powerful intellect than Lenin’s was brought 
to the surface in the whole struggle. Men like 
Chicherin, sacrificing wealth and ease to follow the 
light as they saw it, were not rascals. 

We in our infinite wisdom made it as hard as 
possible to get the truth either into Russia or out of 
it, and when a few men did bring out narratives— 
as Raymond Robins, Colonel Thompson, Arthur 
Ransome, W. T. Goode, Frazier Hunt, Lincoln 
Steffens, Phillips Price, Colonel Malone—we 
called them Bolsheviki, arrested them, or said they 
were so hypnotized by Lenin or others that they 
could neither see nor think. The psychology was 
much like that of a high French official who pro- 
tested to me in 1915 against my exposure of certain 
careful concoctions against the Germans. “I do 
not doubt your word,” he said, “but if you show 
that these charges are false, the people will not be- 


118 The Advancing Hour 


lieve other charges which are true.” O sacred 
truth, how delicate your constitution is! Often the 
metaphor of disease was used to me. If free ex- 
changes of facts and ideas were permitted, the hor- 
rid communist scourge would spread as an epi- 
demic. I might turn the figure of speech, treating 
fresh air as the most general cure, or speaking of 
suppressing symptoms and driving poison under the 
surface; but it was useless, for almost unconquer- 
able was the Schadenfreude, the will to believe the 
worst. 

It did not take Lenin, fanatical Marxian though 
he was, long to realize that the facts were more 
complex than his theories, and he and Krassin were 
the leaders in trying to find a method of introducing 
bourgeois efficiency without entirely losing the 
fruits of the industrial revolution. One over-gen- 
eralization after another went to the scrap-heap. 
The poor peasant was removed from his position of 
ruler over the most prosperous peasant. A corre- 
sponding change took place in the supervision of 
the city populations, in the control of industry, in 
the discipline in the army. Lenin and his more 
tractable followers realized that they had no dia- 
gram to deal with, but what to him appeared as the © 
old Adam in man, and to others might appear as 
his saving graces—unwillingness to work for a far- 
away or abstract end, personal and family concern 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 119 


predominating over all else, and a certain Slavonic 
indolence; in addition to what we would all agree 
upon as weaknesses, corruption and the tendency to 
use power, not for ideal ends, but as other bureau- 
cracies and despotisms have forever used it. The 
world was determined, however, that the Bolsheviki 
should not profit by their experience, but that their 
experiment should forcibly be made a failure, in 
such wise that communism, instead of proving its 
inadequacy, should be sacrificed on the altar of 
international hate. 

Just as the world refused to allow the Bolsheviki 
to evolute into some forms of democracy, so it re- 
fused to allow other democratic elements the best 
opportunity to displace them. It forced the Soviet 
government to keep up a large army, with which it 
was able to maintain a despotism that otherwise 
would have been impossible. It enabled the Bol- 
sheviki, on account of this lack of free intercourse, 
to have their highly colored news about the West 
believed. It forced thousands of able men to choose 
between supporting a régime they hated and sup- 
porting the motley collection of Czarists, who were 
the backbone of the invading armies. ‘The lack of 
food and machinery and the blockade of thought 
and information gradually took away the heart and 
the power of resistance from the democratic ele- 
ments. In 1919 the codperatives even by them- 


120 The Advancing Hour 


selves felt strong enough to pay for, receive and 
distribute food, wearing apparel, medicine and 
farm machinery, and to pay for it with the great 
stores of codperatively raised material. They were 
prevented from doing so, for fear the Bolsheviki 
might get some of the imports. In 1920 we try to 
do what we should have done in 1918 or 1919: and 
try it while Poland is invading Russia. 

The bitter and narrow attitude of the Entente 
satisfied the philosophy of the more ruthless Bol- 
sheviki, but in the characters of Lenin and his 
friends there were too much reasonableness and 
mercy for them willingly to see Russia suffer as 
Europe forced her to suffer. Some of the trickiest 
Bolshevik propagandists encouraged conservative 
West European acquaintances to spread the more 
extreme and silly atrocity stories, because according 
to their philosophy the ultimate success of their 
world-revolution would be encouraged by the vio- 
lence of the capitalist régime and endangered by 
any increase of rationality in the bourgeoisie. They 
knew that violent western lies helped the extremist 
element to control the Soviets and they believed that 
these same crass lies would plant resentment in the 
dumb labor masses abroad. Such extreme revolu- 
tionary minds believed that Raymond Robins was 
dangerous to their ultimate triumph and Henry 
Cabot Lodge and Lord Northcliffe were assistants 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 121 


to it. Those among them who have pressed for a 
solution have been the more conservative members, 
like Krassin, or those who, like Lenin, although be- 
lieving the revolution must come in its time, never- 
theless regretted the infinite suffering, and thought 
that their country was not sufficiently developed for 
a complete communist experiment. 


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Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 123 


On January 16, 1919, the Supreme Council at Paris gave out 
the following communiqué: 

“With a view to remedying the unhappy situation of the popula- 
tion in the interior of Russia, which is now deprived of all manu- 
factured products from outside Russia, the Supreme Council, after 
having taken note of the report of a committee appointed to con- 
sider the reopening of certain trading relations with the Russian 
people, has decided that it would permit the exchange of goods on 
the basis of reciprocity between the Russian people and the Allied 
and neutral countries. 

“For this purpose it has decided to give facilities to the Russian 
coéperative organizations, which are in direct touch with the peas- 
antry throughout Russia, so that they may arrange for the import 
into Russia of clothing, medicines, agricultural machinery, and the 
other necessaries of which the Russian people are in sore need, in 
exchange for grain, flax, etc., of which Russia has surplus supplies.” 

The following is the report of the Committee appointed by the 
Supreme Council to consider the reopening of certain trading rela- 
tions with Russia. 

[This committee was presided over by Mr. E. T. Wise, British 
representative on the Permament Committee of the Supreme Eco- 
nomic Council, and its other members were M. Kammerer and 
the Marquis Della Torretta, representatives respectively of the 
French and Italian Governments. | 
“The Committee understands that it has been instructed to con- 

sider the practical details of a scheme for reconstructing trading 
operations with the whole of Russia without recognizing officially 
the Bolshevist Government, and that in particular it is to examine 
how far it is possible for the codperative organizations to assist in 
this process. 

“The following outline proposals, which are made after taking into 
consideration the suggestion put forward by Mr. Berkenheim, are 
recommended for adoption by the Conference on the assumption 
that direct communications between Allied countries and territories 
occupied by Bolshevist forces are practicable. 

“1, The Allied Governments should inform the codperative or- 
ganizations that they are prepared to permit the exchange of goods, 
on the basis of reciprocity, between all Russia and allied and neutral 
countries, and should invite these organizations to export surplus 
grain, food, and raw materials from Russia, so as to provide ex- 
change for clothing and other goods needed by Russia. 

“2. The codperative organizations would then communicate by 
wireless with their headquarters in Moscow, and inquire whether 
the codperative movement was prepared to undertake the responsi- 


124 The Advancing Hour 


bility for handling the export and import of goods, and whether 
such exchanges were practically possible. Representatives of the 
Paris or London office of the codperative organizations would at 
once proceed to Moscow to discuss details. 

“3, The codperative headquarters in Moscow would ascertain 
whether it would be permitted to export grain, flax, etc., and whether 
transport and other necessary facilities would be afforded to it. 

“4. On receipt of a reply the codperative headquarters would 
then communicate its decision to its Paris representatives. 

“Ss. If the codperative headquarters are prepared to undertake 
responsibility, Mr. Berkenheim and other officials of the codperative 
organizations would then be prepared to make definite contracts to 
supply grain, flax, etc., from Russia, provided that they were 
financed at the beginning up to 25 per cent. of the full value of the 
contracts either direct or through British, French, or Italian co- 
Operative organizations or private traders. 

“6. The balance of the credits required, they would themselves 
provide from their own resources in London, Paris, etc., or by 
arrangement with the British, French, or Italian Codperative Move- 
ment or private bankers or traders. 

“7, They would immediately proceed to start the shipment of 
goods purchased with these credits to the Black Sea or the Baltic 
ports, any loss falling on them if the goods were confiscated or 
destroyed. 

“8. With regard to transport, the codperative headquarters at 
Moscow would endeavor to secure at least four complete trains 
from the Bolshevists for use to and from the Black Sea ports. If 
this was impossible, Mr. Berkenheim and his associates would utilize 
some of their credits for purchasing trucks and locomotives in Allied 
countries. They would in any case send out a number of lorries to 
assist the railways. 

“g. As soon as it becomes clear that grain started to be moved 
out of Russia and that the Bolshevists are offering no resistance, 
the contracts will, of course, be considerably extended, so as to 
cover the full amount of at least one million tons of grain, which 
it is estimated can be exported within a reasonable time.” 

The following is a statement made by a conference of Russian 
Cooperatives: 

“On January 14th last, Mr. A. M. Berkenheim, the vice-chairman 
of the All-Russian Central Union of Consumers’ Societies, the 
‘Centrosoyus’, was invited by the Supreme Council to put before 
them the view held by Russian Codperation on the question of 
resuming commercial intercourse with the Russian people through 
the medium of their codperative organizations. 

“A. M. Berkenheim submitted to the Council a detailed report 
expounding the standpoint of Russian Codéperation as to the neces- 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 125 


sity and practicability of resuming trade exchange with the popula- 
tion of Russia through her codperative societies. 

“On January 16th the Supreme Council arrived at the decision to 
permit the resumption of some trading relations between allied and 
neutral countries and the blockaded parts of Russia through the 
medium of Russian coéperative organizations. 

“In connection with the above a conference took place at Paris 
on January 20th-24th, attended by the following representatives of 
Russian coéperative organizations abroad: Madame E. O. Lensky, 
Messrs. V. N. Zelheim, A. M. Berkenheim, V. K. Vachmistroff, 
K. I. Morosoff, I. V. Bubnoff, K. I. Popoff, A. E. Malachoff, F. I. 
Shmeleff, and T. B. Kusin. They represented the following co- 
operative organizations of Russia: ‘The Moscow Narodny Bank, 
the All-Russia Central Union of Consumers’ Societies (the ‘Centro- 
soyus’), the Union of Siberian Codéperative Unions (‘Zakupsbyt’), 
the Central Association of Flax Growers, the All-Russian Purchas- 
‘ing Union of Agricultural Coédperation (the ‘Selskosoyus’), the All- 
Russian Codperative Union for the Marketing of Kustar and Artel 
Products, and the Council of the All-Russian Codéperative Con- 
gresses. 

“Having heard the report of A. M. Berkenheim, the Conference 
passed the following resolution: 

“1, The conference puts on record that A. M. Berkenheim acted 
exclusively in the interest of the population of Russia, suffering as 
it does from the suspension of economic intercourse, and that he 
has thus shown a true and proper conception of the duties with 
which he was invested by the population organized around Codpera- 
tion. 

“2, The Conference thanks A. M. Berkenheim for the initiative 
and vigor shown by him, which was of the utmost importance at the 
moment when he was unexpectedly invited to attend the meeting of 
the Supreme Council. 

“At the same time the Conference reaffirms the principle of politi- 
cal neutrality of Codperation, as proclaimed at various times by 
All-Russian and provincial Codperative Conferences, and which is 
compulsory on the foreign representatives of Russian codperative 
organizations abroad. 

“With reference to the particular position as created by the de- 
cision of the Supreme Council, this principle implies the following: 

“1, Under any conditions, which conducting negotiations or enter- 
ing into agreements with various Governments on questions of trade 
exchange, Codperation refuses to associate such activity with the 
solution of any political problem whatsoever. 

“2, The population organized by the Codperative Movement hav- 
ing entrusted to that movement the protection of its economic inter- 


126 The Advancing Hour 


ests, the representatives of Russian Codperation abroad deem it 
their duty and moral obligation to approach any foreign or Russian 
Governments with offers and requests calculated.to further their 
task in the domain of international trade exchange. 

“3. The foreign representatives of Russian codperative organiza- 
tions, in view of the difficulties of communicating with their boards 
from whom many of them are completely severed, regard it as 
their duty and obligation to obey, as far as the reéstablishment of 
trade relations with abroad is concerned, the one imperative man- 
date, namely, to assist the restoration of trade exchange in order 
to satisfy the urgent needs of the population, and to promote the 
development of the productive resources of Russia by all means at 
their disposal. 

“4. In order to avoid all possible misapprehensions which may 
arise in connection with the decision of the Supreme Council, the 
Conference deems it necessary to proclaim that in view of their 
particular role, the foreign representatives of Russian codperative 
organizations were not and are not guided in their action by any 
other motives, as, for instance, the desire to support one or another 
political group. The sole motive which prompts their action is to 
supply to the population of all parts of Russia, without exception, 
means of production and the prime necessities of life, as well as to 
market Russian products abroad. 

“‘s. The Conference is of opinion that the restoration of economic 
intercourse between their country and the outside world is necessary 
in the mutual interests of both Russia and foreign countries, because 
the colossal economic losses sustained by all countries during the 
war can be remedied only through an exchange of commodities with 
Russia. 

“6. The Conference considers that the codperative organizations 
of Russia can make themselves responsible for the reéstablishment 
of trade with Russia only in so far as they will not encounter insur- 
mountable difficulties in the form of political conflicts, in the settle- 
ment of which Russian Codperation, being a politically neutral 
economic organization, can take no part.” 


Atrocity stories were the usual newspaper diet about Russia. 
Few of them, however, printed this statement by two commissioners 
of the Chekho-Slovak government: . 

‘The unbearable situation in which our army has been placed 
compels us to appeal to the Allies with a request to advise us how 
the Slovak army may secure safety and free return to the Mother- 
land, which had already been decided upon with the consent of all 
Allied Powers. 

“By guarding the railroad and maintaining order in the country, 


attasei 


Facing Bolshevism: Our Follies in Russia 127 


our army has been forced to act against its convictions and to main- 
tain a state of absolute arbitrariness and lawlessness which now 
reigns here. Under the guard of the Slovak bayonets, the Russian 
troops commit crimes of which the whole civilized world would be 
terrified. The burning of villages, the murder of peaceful Russian 
inhabitants, executions en masse of hundreds of people of demo- 
cratic convictions, as well as those whom they only suspect of 
political disloyalty, are occurring daily, and the responsibility for all 
these crimes before the court of all the peoples of the world will 
fall upon us, for, having sufficient military forces, we did not inter- 
fere with this lawlessness. 

“Bringing all this to the knowledge of the Allied representatives 
whose true allies the Slovaks were and will be we consider it neces- 
sary to use every means in order to make it known to all peoples 
of the world how tragic is the moral situation in the Slovak army 
in Siberia and the reasons for this. We, ourselves, do not see any 
way out of this situation save that of our immediate repatriation 
from the country which has been entrusted to our guard, or render- 
ing us free to act so that we might prevent lawlessness and crimes 
no matter from what source they may come.” 

General Gaida, the Chekho-Slovak commander, said: 

“The Allies are doing Russia more harm than the Bolsheviki, 
and the sooner they leave the better will it be for Russia. All the 
Allies have done in Russia is to support black monarchy, Kolchak, 
Denikin, Yudenich, and the Atamans (Cossaek commanders). 
Within a short time all Siberia west of Baikal will fall to the 
Bolsheviki and from the Baikal to the Pacific will be Japanese- 
dominated provinces controlled by the Atamans. The only people 
that can tie Russia together are those who are now known as 
Bolsheviki. They are not the Reds of the days of terror in European 
Russia, but there is to-day a national movement in Russia for a 
real democracy and the crude form in which it is being displayed 
now eventually will work itself out in a moderate social program.” 


CHAPTER VI 
FACING BOLSHEVISM : THE FUTURE IN RUSSIA 


“There ts no harm in anybody thinking that 
Christ 1s in bread. The harm ts 1n the expectation 
that He is in gunpowder.” —Ruskin. 


“If there be any among us who would wish to 
dissolve this Union or to change its republican 
form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of 
the safety with which error of opinion may be toler- 
ated where reason 1s left free to combat tt.” 

—Thomas Jefferson. 


HE future of Russia cannot be separated 
from the future of the rest of the world. 
Sometimes I wish it could. It seems sad 

that this earth is doomed to become so uniform. 
Some of us have no desire to see the civilization of 
Chicago and Pittsburgh duplicated on the Volga. 
Steam has introduced uniformity on the earth. 
The best we can do is to refrain from spreading this 
uniformity by despotic means. 

A Russian has not been like an American. Fora 
thousand years he has been developing qualities 
(faults and virtues) that are different from ours. 


The typical, the predominating Russian is a peasant. 
128 


nent ale 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 129 


He lives on a vast, flat plain. There in his little 
village, the center of a few farms, he has been ex- 
posed to many dangers and difficulties,—to storms, 
invasions, want, oppression. ‘The resulting spirit 
has not been separate individualism, like that of our 
pioneers. It has been rather a community spirit, a 
tendency toward mutual reliance and mutual help. 
The lack of reading and the lack of new business 
undertakings have probably played their part in 
this communistic tendency. When everybody reads, 
and knows about other parts of the world, and when 
big enterprises tempt young men away, we may see 
a history much like that of the western capitalistic 
nations. Up to now the nature of the life on the 
Russian plain has brought about a mutual trust and 
reliance of which we know nothing. It not unfre- 
quently shows itself in touching ways. Perhaps 
landlords are unfair, to such an extent that the 
farmers in a certain little village decide to move. 
They select one of their number to find a new abode. 
They tell him to go somewhere where the sky and 
the earth meet; or to the Chinese paradise; or to the 
Place Where No One Knows Where It Is. He 
may be gone a year, but he always comes back. The 
money of the villagers is never used by him to dis- 
appear and live in comfort. Or a young man in 
the village kills another. The peasants decide that 
it is too bad he should be banished, being a young 


130 The Advancing Hour 


man with a family, and not a criminal at heart. It 
would be much better for another man to meet the 
requirements of the national criminal law. So a 
delegation goes to Old John and explains the harm- 
fulness of having the young man punished. “You, 
John, on the other hand, have no one depending on 
you, and you have but five or six years to live. You 
might as well spend them in Siberia as anywhere 
else. You tell the authorities that you committed 
the murder.” 

And John does it. 

In less poetic ways the affairs of the village are 
constantly determined by informal conference. If 
an oppressive law is passed, it is not by each man’s 
deciding for himself that the situation is met, but 
by talking it over and seeking the opinions of those 
most trusted. In business affairs also the problems 
were long ago met in the same spirit of village com- 
munity. The habit of general codperation made 
natural the growth of codperatism, if we use that 
word for actual cooperative associations, and the 
Russians, so far behind in competitive and capitalis- 
tic business, have in their own way as striking a rec- 
ord in cooperative business as England or Denmark. 
When Russia entered the great war in 1914 her 
transport, her food supply, her manufacturing soon 
showed their utter inadequacy to conduct modern 
war against Germany. The forces that stepped in to 


———<—<—— 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 181 


fill the gap were the codperative associations, the 
cottage industries, and the local political bodies, the 
zemstvos. As Russia faces another series of crises 
to-day, now that the frank interference of the En- 
tente is ended, and that there is no appreciable civil 
war, it is again to the spirit of codperation, the habit 
of codperation, and the existing great codperative 
associations that those who know Russia look with 
most hope. Danger will not for a long time be 
ended. It is impossible that Russia should work 
out smoothly a system of political life in a short 
time, and it is too much to hope that the nations 
dominated by modern capitalistic ideas will let her 
alone to make her way, without maneuvers on their 
part based on fear and on the excessive desire for 
material gain. The desire to make money out of 
legitimate trade is one of the safest and most useful 
desires in a complex world, but the attempt to get 
every kind of concessions, backed by political pres- 
sure, may well bring us trouble. This usual diffi- 
culty will be complicated by foreign alarm at such 
experiments in socialism or semi-socialism as the 
Russians may choose to make. As to concessions 
already obtained, the evidence that has come to me 
about the Japanese confirms the following statement 
by M. Paul S. Reinsch, formerly our minister to 
China: 

‘As time went on several matters became quite 


182 The Advancing Hour 


clear. The expectation that large bodies of Russian 
troops would flock to the support of the Kolchak 
government was disappointed. An army was indeed 
collected, but it did not make a reassuring impres- 
sion upon observers. It seemed to be lacking in 
spirit and earnestness, and the officers were observed 
to give most of their attention to champagne and 
general high living. Vodka, interdicted in Russia, 
was set free by the Siberian government. Admiral 
Kolchak himself, indeed, and several of his official 
advisers continued personally to command confi- 
dence and respect, but they did not find real popu- 
lar support. 

“Tt has also become clear that the Japanese were 
attempting to use the joint intervention for strength- 
ening their own purpose of gaining special interests 
in Siberia. Suspicion was particularly aroused by 
their relations with General Semyonov. When the 
support which Great Britain and France had orig- 
inally given this leader came to an end, Japanese 
assistance continued, though it was out of line with 
the Allies’ general desire of giving the Kolchak 
government a chance to establish itself. It is un- 
derstood that various agreements were made by Jap- 
anese with the Cossack leaders, for the granting of 
mineral and other concessions as a return for finan- 
cial support. Such matters are generally carried 
out by agents who act in their personal capacity 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 133 


without formal authorization by their government 
and whose work may be either ignored or acknowl- 
edged when the time is ripe. A striking case of this 
method occurred in the negotiations of Nishihara 
at Peking. The existence of his proposals was stout- 
ly denied by the Japanese authorities, but the re- 
sults were ratified the moment they had completely 
matured. For this reason it is entirely impossible 
to know the extent of concessions sought or obtained 
by Japanese individuals or companies, and the rela- 
tion of the latter to the government.” 

Here is an extract from the Japanese paper 
Kokumin, in the fall of 1919: 


“With the bravery of our gallant troops it would 
not be so very difficult for us to clear Siberia of the 
Bolsheviki, and once Japan is successful in uniting 
all of Siberia, we shall then have before us the op- 
portunity of exploiting the gold deposits which are 
so abundant in that country, and of developing the 
timber resources and the industries, in codperation 
with the Russian population. It is, however, im- 
portant to bear in mind that Japanese policies in 
Siberia should be dictated by consideration of our 
own interests, and that we should give no special 
consideration either to Semyonov or to any other 
leader. We need only utilize their individual serv- 
ices if they contribute to the promotion of our own 
interests.” 


Professor Reinsch, whose study of the situation 
has been free and large, after discussing the business 


134 The ‘Advancing Hour 


outlook, says of the Russians that “we should not be 
behindhand in securing our just part in cooperating 
with the Russian people in the great constructive 
era which lies ahead. As far as concerns their social 
and political problem we can have only one wish— 
that the institutions finally evolved may be in har- 
mony with the national genius of Russia.” General 
Smuts, in his notable farewell to the British people, 
at the time of his return to South Africa, gave elo- 
quent expression to a similar view, and hazarded 
the suggestion that the form of government ulti- 
mately most congenial to the Russian genius might 
turn out to be some purified form of Soviet system. 
The number of western statesmen who will look at 
Russian developments with this olympian calm, 
however, is not large, and part of the educational 
task of the present and the future is to induce a 
more tolerant attitude toward whatever new experi- 
ments in government that country may undertake. 
The response to the proposed raising of the block- 
ade against Soviet Russia was not such as to encour- 
age the belief that the policy of not interfering with 
the course of evolution will be genuine. Those 
newspapers that most inevitably represent average 
conventional opinion were filled, in their editorials 
and in letters from excited correspondents, with 
warnings about the terrible consequences of allow- 
ing free intercourse. They viewed with alarm, they 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 185 


spoke of honor and sanity and patriotism, they 
pasted onto any peace offer from the Soviet govern- 
ment the good old labels, left over from the war 
against Germany, such as peace-offensive, insidious 
propaganda, and their fellows. They pointed out 
unceasingly that the codperative associations were 
mere tools of the Bolsheviks, that the Narodny Bank 
had been nationalized, that if any material neces- 
sary to the revival of Russia were allowed to enter 
nobody would get any of it except Bolsheviks. 
Throughout the unhappy trouble our relief organ- 
izations seemed to be gravely concerned with the 
danger that some baby living within Lenin’s juris- 
diction might get something to eat. 

It happened that on the morning of March 11, 
1920, I read but two newspapers. One of them, 
The World, had been in its editorials, and particu- 
larly in its news, more intelligent on Russia than 
most American papers. Each of them contained a 
letter against the policy of having the outside gov- 
ernments finally drop the policy of interfering in 
the ordinary relations between their citizens and 
Russia. The letter to the Times was from Mont- 
gomery Schuyler, formerly in our embassy in Pet- 
rograd, who had been devoting himself ardently to 
protecting his country from the loss of respect that 
would be implied in the government’s letting the 
people alone. He said: 


136 The Advancing Hour 


“The significance of the Bolshevist ‘peace drive,’ 
as I see it, is that the tremendous military machine 
built up by the Bolsheviki is breaking up from in- 
ternal weakness and its leaders realize that the blood 
lust which has characterized their campaign for the 
last two years has overshot the mark. The Bol- 
shevist leaders realize they are sitting on a vol- 
cano and that they are under the suspicion of the 
world. 

“Tt should be borne in mind that the State De- 
partment has not received the ‘peace offer’ dated 
Moscow, Feb. 24, and signed by Chicherin, Peo- 
ple’s Commissary for Foreign Affairs, which the 
Soviet authorities claim to have transmitted for- 
mally to Washington. 

“The fact, as pointed out in a Washington dis- 
patch, that Chicherin is now making a special re- 
quest that publicity be given to this so-called offer 
of peace to a country which is not, and has not, been 
at war with Russia indicates that the Bolshevist 
Government is more interested in reaching the 
American people through the press for its own ends 
than in getting any action from our Government. 

“Due to conditions of unrest and the high cost of 
living throughout the world, there is a movement 
to reopen trade with Russia. Viewed from a strict- 
ly economic angle the United States is not called 
upon to join this movement, because its own re- 
sources make it independent of Russia, and morally 
it would be impossible to do so. 

“This is entirely aside from the loss of self- 
respect which we would sustain in entering into 
negotiations with criminals whom I regard as un- 
worthy of a place in the councils of the nations.” 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 1387 


The letter on the same day in the World was from 
Erving Winslow. It said: 


“Setting aside the ‘academic’ theorists who reck 
so little what their views might bring about in the 
way of world-wide disaster if fulfilled, like Messrs. 
Robins, Bullitt, Hapgood, et al., there is Lloyd 
George, for instance, who deliberately incurs the 
menace of freeing an indorsed propaganda of an- 
archy, through a ‘recognition’ of the authors and 
promoters of it, because his political power may be 
continued by thus obeying the mandate of masses of 
his constituents. Here in America it is ‘trade hun- 
ger that blinds some worthy men (along with some 
not so worthy) to the dreadful consequences of pro- 
moting commercial relations with Soviet Russia, 
while professing hatred of its ‘madness and ravag- 
ing,’ which, of course, would mean and be ‘recog- 
nition,’ indorsing its policy in the eyes of its own 
slaves and prolonging its power at home and abroad. 

“The Post has printed an appeal from the ‘New 
York agent of the Moscow Narodny Bank,’ which 
may be quite sincere but should have been captioned 
‘Advertisement,’ since the bank has been taken over 
by the Soviets, for whose interest, or perhaps for 
certain interests of greed among short-sighted self- 
ish men of ‘business’ Mr. Sherman writes. 

“Trade is doubtless a mighty conqueror, but it is 
only ‘free trade’ which has been claimed as a direct 
moral agent by its advocates, with whom ‘love,’ 
not ‘business success,’ is the ideal—‘omnia vincit 
amor. The ‘ideal,’ fortunately, as a practical 
motive, still survives the war with us, and is pre- 
venting America (by encouraging or allowing 


138 The Advancing Hour 


trade) from ‘recognition’ of a tyranny which has 
‘abolished God’ and the basic principle of democ- 
racy—religious toleration—persecuting, torturing 
and murdering its wretched victims for their re- 
ligious beliefs. Now it is not only in the spirit of 
Him who said, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’—when 
the ‘world’ power which lies in trade was offered 
Him—that the refusal should be plain and positive, 
but for a practical goal which has not yet been en- 
visaged—the rising up en masse of once ‘Holy Rus- 
sia’ for its own liberation. 

“Ts it not worth a trial, say, Catholic, Protestant, 
Jew or moralist—all who love their fellow-men?” 


Such, unhappily, is the quality of thought and 
information that we have to deal with. Shortly be- 
fore these particular examples struck my eye it hap- 
pened that a certain gentleman, whose letters ap- 
pear with comic frequency in the New York news- 
papers whenever there is danger of peace with Rus- 
sia, and who is supposed to be supported by money 
lent by the United States to the Kerenski govern- 
ment, was boasting that to him belonged the chief 
credit for making Mr. Berkenheim’s trip to the 
United States in 1919 a failure. He remarked inci- 
dentally that Mr. Berkenheim was all kinds of a 
crook, who had betrayed everybody with whom he 
had been associated. As the group that talks and 
writes like this has been supported by American 
money, the sharper light thrown on their methods 
the better. Mr. Berkenheim’s statesmanlike career 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 189 


in the service of his country has brought him attacks 
from all factions that have tried in vain to use him. 
Before the rebellion of 1905 he had become the 
acknowledged leader of the codperative movement 
in Russia. As an individual he belonged to the 
Socialist Revolutionary party, which brought about 
that rebellion. The leaders of his party endeavored 
to induce him to involve the codperative associations 
in the rebellion. He firmly maintained that the 
great value of the codperatives would be destroyed 
if their proper business became entangled with poli- 
tics, and for this stand he was charged with dis- 
loyalty by his party associates. He entered the 
Kerenski government, but again refused to influ- 
ence the codperative associations to strengthen that 
government by entering party politics. Again he 
was charged with disloyalty by those who cannot 
see beyond politics. Kerenski fell, the Bolsheviks 
came in, and the biggest codperative associations 
stood with their clear record of non-political pro- 
duction and distribution, a record which they might 
well have lost with less wise leadership at the top. 
The Bolsheviks nationalize them on paper, but even 
in the present dark situation it is not impossible they 
may fail to absorb them in actual practice. What 
our standpat propagandists, those who describe the 
Kolchak and Denikin and Yudenich forces as the 
“loyal” Russians, will be busy about for a long time 


140 The Advancing Hour 


is interfering with the attempt of various great pa- 
triotic, industrious, and representative bodies to 
work out the economic salvation of Russia and 
gradually to settle their relations to whatever gov- 
ernment exists or may exist. A momentous danger 
lies in the interference from outside busybodies who 
find the solace to their pride and their antagonism 
in sowing misrepresentation and distrust and in cre- 
ating artificial obstacles to any progress by concili- 
ation, compromise and cooperation. 

Most of the talk in this country about forcible 
nationalization of industry in Russia took no ac- 
count of the shadings, difficulties, and tendencies. 
We said simply, for example, that the Narodny 
bank has been nationalized. The facts are these: 
The Narodny bank, as the central bank of the Co- 
operatives, was treated in a way significantly differ- 
ent from the other banks. The decree was dated 
Dec. 6th, 1918. The terms provided for: 


1. The transformation of the M.N.B. from an 
independent organization into the Codperative Sec- 
tion of the People’s Bank of the Socialist Republic 
of Soviets. 

2. The abolition of the share capital of the Bank 
as such, the shareholders becoming creditors of the 
Bank and a current account being opened to each 
of them to the amount representing the value of the 
shares held. 

3. The appointment of the Board of the Bank by 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 141 


its shareholders, or, to give them their new title, its 
creditors, subject to the Board being approved by 
the Central Board of “The People’s Bank.” 


In all other respects the Bank was to retain its 
independence and to carry on its work without any 
interference from outside. 

In commenting on this decree, the Russian Co- 
operator at the time remarked that: “only time 
will show whether these privileges are to be re- 
spected by the present masters of Russia, or whether 
they are merely the thin end of the wedge, which 
will establish a much sterner form of nationaliza- 
tion.” 

And that was for many months the central ques- 
tion between the Bolshevik government and the co- 
operatives. ‘The spirit was one that cannot be 
grasped by those who insist on making a clear, 
sharp issue. Both sides were trying to find a way. 
The codperatives did not wish to oppose the po- 
litical principles of the de facto government, and 
the more intelligent elements in the government 
feared that it could not eradicate codperation with- 
out destroying production. ‘The tone was justly 
represented by this summary of the situation from 
the Russian Codperator for March, 1920: 


“We shall not attempt to dwell here on the ques- 
tion whether the treatment ... was dealt out by 
the Soviet authorities to the two most important 


142 The Advancing Hour 


branches of our movement out of hostility to co- 
operation on principle, or out of a, let us admit, 
natural and quite justifiable desire to make codpera- 
tion fit into the structure of a new social order 
evolved by the present Government of Russia, and 
conform to the general economic line of policy laid 
down by them. We can only place on record the 
fact that serious attempts were made, for one reason 
or another, to deprive the codperative organizations 
of Russia of their previous independence and make 
them serve the interests of the State, as understood 
by the leaders of the Soviets. On the other side, it 
must be recorded that, as far as the results of this 
policy were concerned, it appeared at that time that 
the opposition of codperation, coupled with its 
economic importance, compelled the authorities to 
proceed slowly and cautiously, and that our move- 
ment was able to adapt itself to the new conditions, 
and retain a large measure of its former freedom 
of action and independence. ‘This is a fact on which 
all witnesses from Soviet Russia are agreed. 

“The policy of compromises thus pursued by the 
Soviets towards the codperative organizations was 
undoubtedly dictated in the first instance by the 
economic importance of the latter, especially in a 
country torn asunder by civil war and with an eco- 
nomic system which had, even in the words of 
Lenin, gone to pieces. ‘This fact manifests itself 
particularly in the attitude adopted by the Govern- 
ment of the Soviets toward the various branches 
of Agricultural Codperation. 

‘““We know, for instance, that in the same month 
which witnessed the nationalization of the Moscow 
Narodny Bank the Soviets approved the organiza- 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 148 


tion of a new important society of Agricultural Co- 
operation, namely, the ‘Selskosoyus.’ Since then, 
according to all information which has reached us, 
the Selskosoyus acts on behalf of the Government in 
various Capacities, and is entrusted by them with the 
purchase and distribution of various agricultural 
implements and materials. 

“Similarly, the food control authorities work in 
the same way with the cooperative societies, which 
have emerged from the Goods Department of the 
Moscow Narodny Bank, which have their place 
officially assigned to them in the system of State 
control, and are acting as a link between the authori- 
ties and the producers. 

“Tn summarizing the information which we pos- 

sess about the recent position of our movement in 
Soviet Russia, we can say that two facts stand out 
clearly. 
“Firstly, while it is undoubtedly true that co- 
- operation has been, to one degree or another, de- 
prived of its independence, the codperative organ- 
izations were not, however, destroyed or superseded, 
but were made parts of the State machinery, and 
made use of in order to carry out the policy and 
aims of the new economic system proclaimed in 
Russia. 

“Secondly, in the whole of their dealings with 
cooperation the Soviets have manifested a certain 
degree of tolerance, and have afforded to it some 
privileges which they never thought of conferring 
upon private capital. 

“The questions remain: How far has the process 
of extending the principles of nationalization to co- 
operation gone at present? How far has the policy 


144 The Advancing Hour 


of ruthless nationalization and control gained the 
upper hand over the tolerance towards, and recog- 
nition of, the economic importance of codpera- 
tione 

‘Whatever be the reply to these questions, we are 
convinced that in the struggle for the right to serve 
the interests of the masses the codperative idea 
will emerge as the more successful and prefer- 
able.” 


The coodperators, in short, mean to exercise pa- 
tient, passive resistance to any interpretation of 
nationalization that takes away spontaneity, self- 
management, the soul of codperation, but they do 
not intend, if they can avoid it, to be drawn into 
political opposition. Lenin said in December, 
1918: 


“The government of the Soviets, while not depart- 
ing from its position of irreconcilable struggle 
against imperialism and capitalism, sees itself 
nevertheless compelled to recognize the immediate 
importance of an agreement with the codperative 
movement. The Soviets have arrived at the period 
of reconstruction when the efforts of all laboring 
classes are required, and the experience and knowl- 
edge of the codperative organizations especially can 
prove a valuable support for this task. It has for a 
long time been the aim of the Soviet Government 
to call on all the codperative forces to join the work 
of the restoration of the economic life of the coun- 
try, which aim it is attempting to carry out 
now.” 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 145 


The attempt of the government to transform the 
Centrosoyus, or central consumers’ association, into 
the food distributing branch of the government, 
showed itself in a decree of April 12, 1919, but 
the masses do not like the idea and the decree is 
likely in the long run to prove a paper decree, as 
far as actual operation goes. The officials ap- 
pointed by the government watch and control the 
work, which, however, is in part managed by former 
directors and managers chosen by the codperatives 
themselves. This compromise, of course, was not 
entirely satisfactory either to the codperators or to 
the communists, but it was a genuine effort on both 
sides to help the Russian people. It was upset 
largely by outside political propaganda, treating 
trade with the cooperatives as a move against the 
Soviet government. The situation was described 
by Mr. Sherman, of the Narodny Bank, in the So- 
cialist Review for March: 


“All other branches of codperation, especially the 
powerful Central Producers’ Associations, never 
were and are not now nationalized. The Central 
Flax Growers’ Association, the All-Russian Agency 
of Agricultural Codéperation, ‘Selskosoyus,’ the Po- 
tato Union, the Codperative Grain and the Cen- 
tral Association of Food Growers and ‘Kustarsbyt,’ 
continue their usual work. While private insurance 
companies have been abolished in Soviet Russia, the 
cooperatives created the All-Russian Insurance 


146 The Advancing Hour 


Union in which the Bolshevist authorities them- 
selves have insured all the cattle of the country. 
Thus the nationalization of codperation is at most 
only partial, but actually it is rather formal, not 
really affecting the independent codperative work. 
This does not mean that the codperatives are acting 
in bad faith or are in reality enemies of the Bol- 
sheviki under the disguise of being friends. The 
cooperators never professed to be their friends nor 
are they by any means their enemies. The codpera- 
tors are friends of the population and enemies of 
the competitive industrial system. ‘They are serv- 
ing the population and are loyally continuing to 
serve it even under most trying conditions imposed 
upon them by the Bolsheviki. As the spokesman of 
the ‘Centrosoyus,’ A. V. Merkulov, expressed it at 
a cooOperative conference in Moscow: ‘Our aim is 
to safeguard as far as possible the self-activity and 
independence of codperation and to soften the de- 
crees in so far as they violate these principles,’ and 
that is the only proper attitude for the codperatives 
towards any decree to which they are opposed. 

“Tt is not the business of codperators to express a 
judgment as to the political value and significance 
of Sovietism. The codperators are anti-Bolshevik 
to the very extent to which the Bolsheviki are anti- 
cooperators. ‘Their resistance is as small or as great 
as the pressure exerted upon them.” 


I think it is perfectly clear that if the Bolsheviks 
push the codperators too hard the Bolsheviks will 
thereby insure their fall, but that if they are 
tactful with them they may succeed in working out 
a compromise between their own doctrines and the 


— —— 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 147 


peasants’ traditional methods of acting that may 
have decided advantages over unmitigated capital- 
ism. The reason that the codperatives have been 
able to retain in part the essentials of liberty is 
simple. he prime fact has been that the people 
as a whole would not do efficient work for the 
government, but that they would continue to work 
for themselves and for their codperative associa- 
tions. Also private commerce went on, usually but 
not always at such a profit as rightly to be called 
profiteering. A significant example of the national 
psychology is the way the peasant managed his 
grain. In order to keep the government from tak- 
ing it away from him he stored it without thresh- 
ing it. The government kommissar, unable to carry 
it away without threshing it for himself, let it alone. 
_ The private trader, on the other hand, brought the 
peasant something he needed, an agreement was 
reached, and the two set to work and together 
threshed the amount to be paid for. Russia is an 
enormous place, which goes on living, with little 
relation to politics. When the Communist govern- 
ment does undertake to nationalize the codperative 
associations, what happense It will probably dif- 
fer much in different localities. The following il- 
lustration was given to me by one of the parties to 
the transaction. One day a local kommissar turns 


148 The Advancing Hour 


up at a cooperative plant, and the following con- 
versation occurs: 

Kommissar: “Are you Comrade Ivanov (the 
manager) P” 

Manager: “Yes, and who are you?” 

Kommissar: “I am Kommissar Pavlov, sent to 
exercise control here.” 

Manager: ‘Well, what are you going to dor” 

Kommissar: “For one thing, I am going to look 
around and see that no political activities are going 


on.” 


Manager: “All right. Fine. Go ahead.” 

Kommissar: “Also I want to see your papers.” 

They are turned over to him. In a day or two 
he brings them back. “I don’t understand anything 
in all this,” he says. The only thing that happens 
is that he writes his name on certain papers which — 
he thinks important, to go through the farce of pre- 
tending that he is conducting the business. The 
cooperatives go on as usual. 

A serious interference has been requisition. This 
is annoying and causes some loss, but it has not been 
confined to the Bolsheviks. There have been 
requisitions by General Semyonov, General Hor- 
vath, General Khomyakov, Admiral Kolchak, 
requisitions by local soviets, requisitions by hood- 
lums, and requisitions by the Moscow Central Gov- 
ernment. When the government requisitions a cer- 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 149 


tain amount of food it pays less for it than the co- 
operatives receive when they sell it elsewhere. ‘This 
has been an annoyance, but not sufficient in amount 
to keep the cooperative members from being satis- 
fied to go on working. 

In considering the probable future relations in 
Russia between the government and the producing 
organizations we must take as one of the most im- 
portant premises the fact that the Bolsheviks have 
so far found communistic production a failure. 
Karl Marx has broken down in the face of human 
nature. The Bolshevik technical publications them- 
selves show it. Take the following, for example, 
from the New Way, one of the economic publica- 
tions, reproduced in Soviet Russia for March 27, 
1920: 

“The causes indicated influence the general de- 
cline in the productivity of labor in the following 
proportions: 


(1) Weakening of the organism and the 


poorest state of health.......... aaa es 
(2) Relaxation of working discipline....... 20% 
(3) Introduction of the daily wage........ 19% 
(4) Poor working organization........... 6% 
(5) Diminution in the quality of the basic 

02x Se ORRIN bc A 6% 
(6) Wear and tear of machines.......... 5% 


150 The Advancing Hour 


“The action of the second, and that of the third 
and fourth of these causes are closely connected. 
As is proved by the experience of these last months, 
the simple return to piece payment led at once to an 
improvement in the discipline and the organization 
of work. Every violation of order which hinders 
the effective execution of the common work is 
checked at its source. Thus at the factory of Puti- 
loff the following case occurred. Through lack of 
attention the firemen had permitted a low pressure 
of steam in the boiler, thus slowing up the ma- 
chines. ‘The workers at once went in search of 
those responsible, and, revolver in hand, forced 
them to work, as far as that was physically possi- 
ble.” 


The admitted falling off in the productiveness of 
the industries managed by the government has been 
offset by the increased efforts of small industry, 
some of it strictly private, winked at by the authori- 
ties, and much of it the growth of the codperative 
and semi-codperative industries. A serious student 
of these matters will give careful attention to some 
figures collected by the zemstvos, showing the rela- 
tions between big and little industry in 1918 as com- 
pared with 1908. The contrast would be still more 
striking to-day if we could get the figures, for the 
small industries have been growing and the large, 
government-controlled industries have deteriorated 
a great deal in the last two years: 


Facing Bolshevism: The Future in Russia 151 


TABLE OF PRoDucTIVITY For TEN-YEAR PERIOD 


General Classification 


, of Industries 


Finrr— 
Spinning 
Weaving 
Felt footwear 
Rope-making 
Lace-making, etc. 
Tailoring, hat-making 


Woop Propucts— 
Wood-sawing 
Boxes, trunks 
Cooper work 
Carriage-making wagons, wheels 
Tables, furniture, floors 
Basketry 
Turners’ work 
Musical instruments, etc. 


MeETAL— 
Agricultural machinery and imple- 
ments 
Locks, horseshoes, surveyors’ 
instruments 


MrineraLt—Total _ 
Pottery, porcelain, etc. 


Hipes AND OTHER ANIMAL 
PropucTs— 
Hides 
Sheepskins, furs 
Footgear 
Fur coats, gloves 
Harness 


SMALL 


INDUSTRIES 


Bic 
INDUSTRIES 


For 34 Provinces 


Roubles 
1908 


mW 10 0 Wn st 


Millions of Gold 


1918 


nips of Gold 


oubles 
1908 1918 


351 216 
791 483 
5 5 
10 7 
43 30 
7 + 
go 62 
4 2 
3 3 
0.2 0.4 
13 14 
0.2 0.9 
2 2 
10 6 
27 19 
71 38 
98 134 
15 24 
77 24 
4 2 
13 9 
0.4 0.2 
6 4 


For detailed narrative of the growth of codpera- 
tive industry in Russia during the war I must refer 
to Chapter VIII. Here it may be said that the Czar’s 
government distrusted the self-governing, indus- 


152 The Advancing Hour 


trial, codperative efforts of the people, but found 
itself compelled, in time of stress, to rely on them; 
and everything indicates that we are going to see 
the story continue under whatever government may 
evolve in Russia. Industry will probably never 
be capitalistically as despotic as it has been with 
us, and also it will probably never yield to the op- 
posite despotism of complete centralized state man- 
agement. ‘To work out the most satisfactory type 
of civilization, industrial and political, will be the 
task of the Slav genius. What should lead us to 
imagine that our interference can helper We are 
seeking paths away from the exaggerations of pri- 
vate capitalism. We are endeavoring to socialize 
our civilization. The Bolsheviks started at the 
other end. They began with a doctrinaire plan of 
complete socialization. They, or their successors, 
~must find paths away from their extreme, to let in 
the freedom desired by men. Possibly in the end 
these two movements, opposite in direction, may 
find their rest somewhere near the same place. 


CHAPTER VII 
IS SOCIALISM NEEDED? 


“We are all Socialists now.” 
Sir William Vernon Harcourt. 


“Tf every just man that now pines with want 

Had but a moderate and beseeming share 

Of that which lewdly pampered Luxury 

Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, 

Nature’s full blessings would be well dispensed.” 
Comus. 


T was in 1888 that Sir William Vernon Har- 
| court spoke the words quoted above. Social- 

ism is one of those words that easily mean any- 
thing, from Harcourt’s liberalism to Bill Hay- 
wood’s dictatorship of the proletariat. When I 
was a boy, the very word was spoken in hushed 
tones. It was sure to startle and alarm. It is still 
in bad standing with us, but in Europe there is like- 
ly to be more enlightenment in the socialist parties 
than in the others. Those parties that call them- 
selves by some other name take positions that nearly 
all prosperous Americans would call socialistic. 
Lord Robert Cecil is the essence of Toryism at its 


best. but when he comes out for a partnership be- 
| 153 


154 The Advancing Hour 


tween labor and capital he means a real partner- 
ship; he is too honest a man to mean a trick. Eng- 
land leads the world in studying the problem of in- 
dustrial relations. She has long led in political 
evolution, and we may find her aristocrats taking as 
enlightened a part in this new emancipation as they 
have taken in the political changes. 

The war has shown to the working people of the 
European belligerents something they cannot for- - 
get. In their striving against the sabotage of capital 
they have been met with certain words, decade after 
decade, in which they knew there was no meaning, 
but they had not the power to expose the emptiness 
of the argument. The war has made the exposure. 
How sacred was the talk about the impossibility of 
doing business without a profit, and how little the 
words were understood. Since the war the expres- 
sion has a meaning still, but a meaning profoundly 
different. Fully as clearly as before we know that 
a factory which does not produce with efficiency 
things that men and women need is destructive; but 
we likewise understand, much more clearly, that a 
capitalist who can make what he calls a profit only 
by keeping his men unemployed a third of the time 
is flagrantly destructive. | 

“How much it is his fault, and how much it is the 
fault of capitalist society, is not relevant to the 
socialist argument. The point is that all the sabot- 


Is Socialism Needed? 155 


age ever charged against labor is little compared 
to the habitual sabotage of capitalistic society: that 
is to say, the loss of product due to conducting the 
world’s business from other motives than these: 

1. To produce primarily things that are needed. 

2. To produce them uninterruptedly. 

3. To distribute them equitably. 

How was it possible to carry on the war so much 
longer than our economic experts told us it could 
be carried on? Precisely by conducting business on 
these principles. We produced what for war-time 
we needed: there is no reason why in peace time 
we should not produce what 1s needed. We kept 
production going less exclusively than formerly in 
accordance with its effect on John Smtith’s shares of 
stock, more according to our need of the product. 
Many luxuries and the advertising that sells them 
were diminished. Distribution tended also to be 
regulated according to the need. The whole idea of 
the equal necessity of the capitalist with the laborer 
received a blow. We had state socialism in all the 
Warring countries, and in those countries that 
brought the heaviest force to bear—Germany, 
England, France—the importance of labor was 
seen, whereas the control of business by the capital- 
ist was largely pushed aside. “You may stay where 
you are,” the governments said, “in so far as you 
are expert managers, and will work under our 


156 The Advancing Hour 


orders, but in so far as you claim arbitrary com- 
mand because of something you call stock, you inter- 
fere with efficiency and will kindly step to the rear. 
After the war you may begin to rule again, and use 
your words ‘can’ and ‘cannot,’ and ‘profit’ and 
‘loss,’ because we do not take peace seriously; but 
in war we have no time to be bothered with your 
dialect.” 

American business men talk more about the neces- 
sity of increasing production than they talk about 
the difference between producing luxuries and pro- 
ducing necessities. Capitalists are praised as crea- 
tive, imaginative, and socially useful because they 
increase the amount of wealth engaged in reproduc- 
tion, regardless of whether the increased effort 
means putting more labor on the things we need 
or more labor on the things we might better do 
without. 

The capitalists try to meet this war demonstra- 
tion by talking about the burden of debt and our 
having lived on capital during the war, but after 
legitimate concession is made to this answer the 
socialist position remains difficult to meet. What 
values were destroyed? Human lives, human 
limbs, roads, bridges, villages, soils, factories: all — 
of these are tangible, though on the material side 
there is to be offset the saving of five years in les- 


Is Socialism Needed? 157 


sened luxury and in increased effort, serious atten- 
tion, and resourcefulness. 

We may leave out for the present the loss through 
disorganization, as whether that fluidity is to give 
us gain or loss rests on decisions still to be made. 

‘We come then to the loss represented by debt. 
What can this represent in addition to the tangible 
losses already mentioned? From the point of view 
of society as a whole, nothing. We have certain 
interesting implications and promises, regarding the 
distribution of our future production, and regard- 
ing the continuity of our promises to repay those 
whose earnings were used in the war; but it is 
wholly impossible, by any subtlety, to increase the 
loss to society as a whole by metaphysical financial 
conceptions. Stocks and bonds and notes represent 
objects. When we know how many objects and per- 
sons have been destroyed, we know the gross loss; 
and whether the net loss almost equals the gross, 
or whether it is much smaller, or does not exist, 
is to be decided by the political and social occur- 
rences of the new few years. 

Prince Lvov, head of the Russian provisional 
government, made a very interesting statement 
about the effect of the war on the masses, in Strug- 
gling Russia, March 6, 1920: 

“The magnitude of the unfolding struggle turned 
out to be beyond the power of the mechanisms of 


158 The Advancing Hour 


State. The nations themselves, with their whole or- 
ganisms, were dragged into the struggle. ‘The 
mechanisms lagged behind, were shaken up and 
weakened, while the masses were found to be ahead 
of them, and grew strong and powerful. As a 
result, Democracy was the victor on all fronts. In 
the hearts of Democracy in all warring countries 
a feeling of triumph grew up through the realiza- 
tion of the sacrifices that had been made, the blood 
that had been shed, and the righteousness of its 
cause. Upon the fields of battle, as well as upon the 
peaceful wheat stretches of Russia, within her in- 
dustrial and state establishments, the masses 
suddenly began to realize their solidarity and their 
strength, and they understood that they had gone 
into the trenches and perished for the preservation 
of an order which, while ready to cede to them 
Heaven, would not give up even a part of the 
Earth. A new international front, the front of the 
world proletariat against the bourgeoisie, was sud- 
denly formed. Its platform is the inequalities pro- 
duced by civilization and its enemies are the state 
and capital. Upon its banner are inscribed prom- 
ises of worldly goods, money and a hazy idea of 
communism, the road to which is mapped out 
through the destruction of the old state organisms. 
Russian Bolshevism has amputated with an axe the 
vicious ulcers of civilization. But together with 
the sore spots it has also cut out an enormous part 
of the living body of the people, it has crippled it 
and has brought it near death. But the powerful 
organism of Russia will conquer. Even under the 
new environs it is gaining back its living strength. 
The old abyss is gone, the peasant masses are pros- 


a 


Is Socialism Needed? 159 


pering, the land is in the hands of the toilers, and 
its just distribution depends upon the will of the 
people. ‘he nationalities of Russia have become 
autonomous and the doors to the free cultural devel- 
opment of national life and true popular govern- 
ment have been opened.” 


If the socialist position, in so far as it criticizes 
the capitalist system, has been strengthened by the 
war, its extremer boasts about what it can do itself 
have received blows. Its Marxian formulas have 
been made ridiculous. In all countries, along with 
the necessity of government control of key indus- 
tries, of distribution and consumption, have been 
shown the inconveniences and limitations of all 
those things. The human soul has revolted against 
such centralized control. Life has looked like 
slavery. Masses of bureaucrats have annoyed us 
and reminded us of Prussia. The gain in produc- 
tion brought about by state control has been partly 
offset by various inefficiencies of state execution. 
That orthodox Marxism has lost by the war is as 
clear as that the socialist idea in its less schematized 
and more vital forms has gained. Not only has the 
idea of an all-interfering bureaucracy become more 
vivid in its unpleasantness, but there has been 
brought into relief a fundamental false assumption 
of Marx, that men would tend to become clearly 
divided into proletarians and capitalists. Obviously 
from four-fifths to nine-tenths of the people in tne 


160 The Advancing Hour 


United States are capitalists, a condition Marx 
never looked forward to. It is not only every man 
who owns a house, a farm, a bond, or a bank de- 
posit, who is a capitalist. In the sense of having 
an interest against a theoretical and sudden level- 
ing, every man is a capitalist who is able to do more > 
in his present position than he would be confident 
of doing after a revolution. An energetic young 
American carpenter starting out in life is in oppor- 
tunity and spirit a capitalist. If we accept the 
favorite socialist test, therefore, and leave out every 
standard except the economic—leave out the glory 
of whim and the dull weight of standardization— 
even so, while a large percentage of Americans 
stand to win from radical reforms, a large four- 
fifths also stand to lose by an experiment that en- 
dangers every established individual stake. For 
revolution, therefore, in the sense of violence and 
theoretical completeness there can be in our country 
but a small minority, and those Reds will be pow- 
erless unless the Blacks are so powerful and so 
stupid that the moderates between are helpless. In 
a relentless fight between the Reds alone and the 
Blacks alone the Reds in the end will win. That 
is why recent victories of the Blacks in America are 
dangerous. 

For socialism as a direction, rather than for so- 
Clalism as a dogma, the war did two things. It 


7, 


Is Socialism Needed? 161 


oriented the western labor forces and it affected 
the moral sense of the world. These two things will 
remain true long after the present reactionary wave 
in America has spent its force. 

The war oriented the western labor forces and it 
thus organized the western revolution, because it 
has thrown light upon these things: 

(1) Upon the capitalistic origins of modern war. 

(2) Upon the capitalistic nature of the peace. 

(3) Upon the capitalistic hypocrisy of most of 
the war statements of the ruling class in every 
country. 

(4) Upon the capitalistic bitterness with which 
the Czarist Russians were supported, not for love 
of them, but from hatred of the communists. A 
country was fought because of its form of govern- 
ment; every weapon, trick, and lie was used against 
it; the League of Nations was poisoned at its birth; 
the Holy Alliance was almost equalled as a solid 
phalanx in defense of existing economic institu- 
tions; a blockade was conducted which to starvation 
added explicitly the prevention of persons or corre- 
spondence passing to and fro. When crimes are to 
be perpetrated the perpetrators prefer the dark. 
If the governments of the world had sat up nights 
seeking a method of proving to liberal labor every- 
where the savage purpose by which the ruling class 
is guided, they could not have selected conduct bet- 


162 The Advancing Hour 


ter suited to burn it deep. I know that in my own 
acquaintance, among the more elastic-minded of my 
own age, and more particularly among the intelli- 
gent young, the Russian crime has held the first 
place in influence, while they have faced the great 
decision, whether to improve the existing system 
or to reform it out of existence. 

The first point then, at which the socialist spirit, 
as contrasted with any dogma, has gained is in 
clearer knowledge of the blindness of existing 
governments, in clearer knowledge of their meth- 
ods, and in awakened realization of the points at 
which communism is likely to fail. The second 
point, possibly even more important, is in the change 
that has taken place in the center of gravity in 
political, social, and ethical thought. ‘This battle 
may be won or lost; we may pass into better periods 
or worse: but inevitably and forever now the com- 
bat must rage around the economic rights of the 
majority. ‘The industrial conflict is as clearly un- 
stoppable now as the political conflict was after 
1688, 1775, and 1789. It is the consequence of har- 
nessing steam and teaching men to read; of large- 
scale production, intricate communication, and uni- 
versal thought. Why need we be alarmed over 
words on the one hand, or wedded to them on the 
othere In spite of its orthodox socialist planks, 
there have joined the British Labor Party many 


Is Socialism Needed? 163 


men to whom the ideas of Karl Marx are nothing 
more than useful suggestions. They joined be- 
cause the party’s immediate program was in the 
right direction, and they would let the future 
take care of the later steps. It is in intellectual 
expertness, in insistence on those rights of la- 
bor that are demonstrated not only by reason 
but by experience, that socialism has won most 
in the war. That the purely orthodox, Marx- 
bible, Bolshevik brand has been discredited, except 
as a temporary violent remedy for a malignant dis- 
ease, might have been shown far more strikingly if 
we had let the Russian experiment alone. Had it 
been let alone its failure on the economic side would 
have taught a much clearer lesson, because the rea- 
son for the failure would have been clear. It would 
have stood out unmistakably that Lenin and 
Bismarck are intellectual cousins; that paternalism, 
whether of the right or of the left, has its limits 
in nature; that a limitless bureaucratic control 
of life is objectionable to man. A person who 
reads Lenin’s own speeches carefully has the most 
interesting demonstration of this truth. Our 
military interference, and later our blockade, ob- 
scured the lesson and gave the Bolsheviks plenty of 
excuses for the obvious fact that they held power 
only by suppressing the opposition press, preventing 
free assembly and discussion, and arresting as 


164 The Advancing Hour 


counter-revolutionary almost anybody who was a 
candidate for any political position and was not a 
communist. Without our policy of fear and ob- 
scurantism and interference the Bolsheviks would 
have lost power in 1918 or 1919 or else have re- 
mained in power at the price of dropping their 
communism altogether except for control of a lim- 
ited number of the necessities of life. 

It will be fair, in connection with this statement 
about what would have happened, to meet the only 
plausible argument put forward by the blockadists 
and interventionists. It is like an argument 
discussed in another chapter. It is this: If stopping 
intervention and lifting the blockade works against 
Bolshevism, as is maintained by the liberals, why 
have the Bolsheviks striven for peace, and tried to 
have the blockade lifted? ‘The answer is in part that 
the more desperately theoretical and uncompromis- 
ing ones have not tried. ‘Those who have been most 


eager to resume peaceable relations with the outside 


world have been the most intelligent ones, headed 
by Lenin, who realize that the experiment in pure 
communism is ended, and who prefer to face evolu- 
tion, saving what they can of the revolutionary 
changes, rather than to seek prolongation of their 
arbitrary sway, at the cost of ruining Russia and in 
the end preparing for a reaction to the extreme 
right. ‘This explanation may not pass with men 


© en ee 


Is Socialism Needed? 165 


who believe that men like Lenin, Krassin and 
Lunacharski wear horns, but it will easily be under- 
stood by the more generous critics, who know that 
Lenin and some of his friends are many-sided men, 
regretting the sorrows of their country, and anxious 
to do the best they can in a difficult and contradic- 
tory world. Bolsheviks wished the blockade raised: 
so did anti-Bolsheviks, from Kerenski to Berken- 
heim. Both sides wished to help Russia and were 
willing to take some chances. The Russians who 
welcomed intervention and blockade were mostly 
expropriated aristocrats, who could hope little from 
any democratic government. | 

We can fairly, I think, sum up the great Russian 
experiment in socialism, as far as it has gone, in a 
few sentences. The peasant, who is Russia, pre- 
ferred the communist despotism to reaction, and 
hence the armies opposing the Bolsheviks all dis- 
appeared. But this preference was relative. He 
did not enjoy being interfered with on his farm, 
any more than he enjoyed having his cooperative 
management interfered with. The Bolsheviks, 
when they came to power, promised the peasant 
three things. They promised him peace, land, and 
self-government. ‘They could not give him peace, 
but he: saw that the continuance of war was not the 
fault of the Bolsheviks. They tried to interpret 


166 The Advancing Hour 


his ownership of land with communistic subtleties, 
which he calmly ignored, and took the land in sheer 
private ownership. They also tried to interpret 
self-government in terms of government by a few 
orthodox communists, but when the government 
tried to apply its doctrines by taking calves and 
wheat away from him he lost interest in its theories. 
He found ways of limiting the government’s power 
to requisition but yet of continuing to produce more 
than his family ate, and trading the surplus for 
what he needed. From both fields of war-experi- 
ence, then, we draw the same lesson. In the state 
socialism of the western powers at war and in the 
special theoretical experiment in Russia there is the 
clear answer of experience to communism, as far as 
the powers that rule us have permitted us to get the 
facts. The Marxians are strong as long as they are 
on the offensive. Their strength lies in the terrible 
injustices of the present system, which they point 
out, without wearying, year after year, and without 
successful contradiction. ‘Their weakness is shown 
when they are put on the defensive. Then we see 
that no honeyed words can disguise the inherent 
evils of a vast bureaucracy. It has all the faults of 
size, the faults of government from the top, of over- 
government, and it goes against the deep-seated de- 
sire of men to work out their own destinies in a 


Is Socialism Needed? 167 


thousand different ways of their own devising in 
groups that grow up to meet specific needs. 

There are answers to the evils of capitalism, but 
there is no one answer. : 


CHAPTER SV it 
THE ANSWER OF COOPERATION 


“Why should one-half of the boots and shoes used 
in the United States be manufactured in the 1500 
workshops of Massachusetts?” 

Prince P. A. Kropotkin. 


“Codperation is the only immediate solution for 
the present industrial and farm unrest. Cddpera- 
tion 1s probably the last orderly method by which 
the struggling masses of the country will seek relief 
from the present oppressive and unjust economic 
conditions. As American citizens who love our 
country, we are necessarily interested in securing 
relief in such a natural and orderly way.” 


C. H. Gustavson of the Nebraska 
Farmer’s Union, 1920. 


F all the answers to the excesses and 
errors of private capitalism the one that 1s 
the most clearly worked out is the codpera- 

tive movement. It is also an answer that has 
gained in strength during the war. Not all of this 
Wwar-gain will be held, by any means, because it 
resulted directly from war conditions, but on the 
other hand the movement has been growing with 


enough rapidity, over a long enough time, in va- 
168 


The ‘Answer of Codédperation 169 


rious countries, to have proved its importance. In 
our country it is in its infancy, but there are already 
aspects of it that are significant, and there are some 
of the mistakes special to our development that 
might be better corrected by codperative move- 
ments carried a long distance than in any other way. 
The ambitions of codperation do not necessarily re- 
quire what would be practically a new world, like 
complete state socialism, syndicalism, the full the- 
ory of guild socialism. Many cooperatives are 
socialists and many are not. Indeed to some it 
seems that it is in successful competition with capi- 
talism, not in the effort to abolish it, that codpera- 
tion has succeeded; although this successful compe- 
tition has had its distinct limits. If private capital 
should be abolished, codperation in its present mean- 
ing also would cease to be. ‘Those theories, there- 
fore, which aim at ending capital are often hostile 
likewise to the codperative movement. Robert Owen 
was a socialist but the whole history of the institu- 
tions of which he dreamed has been away from 
socialism in the complete national bureaucratic 
sense. As in all cases of this kind there are con- 
flicting tendencies. There has been a close political 
alliance in Belgium between the socialist party and 
the cooperatives, but it is to be remembered that the 
Belgian socialists are essentially of the step-by-step 
kind, concerned with specific improvement and gen- 


170 The Advancing Hour 


eral education rather than with the strictest 
Marxian orthodoxy. In France also there has been 
socialistic support for the codperatives. In 1917 
the British codperatives established close relations 
with the Labor Party. ‘These tendencies are not in- 
consistent with the fact that we see the majority of 
the Russian cooperatives feeling that if they are to 
be subjected, in their actual workings, to State So- 
cialism, they will lose their reason for existence. 
The difference is not so much in the point of view 
of the codperatives in the different countries as in 
the essentially different things that all go under the 
name of socialism. ‘The orthodox socialist wishes 
the state to be everything. ‘The syndicalist and the 
philosophic anarchist wish the state not to exist at 
all. The guild socialist reduces the state functions 
below what they are at present. Syndicalism and 
socialism are class movements. ‘he codperative 
movement, in the main, has been non-political. It 
has let philosophies of government alone and has 
undertaken to improve conditions inside of the ex-. 
isting framework. It has received its impulse from 
the labor class but it does not seek the triumph of 
one class over another. 

Although the revival, in modern form, of the 
guild system has not taken on large proportions it 
is watched with much interest by the most intelli- 
gent students of industry. The so-called labor co- 


The Answer of Codperation 171 


operatives of Italy, making contracts with the goy- 
ernment, are doing guild work. At Hull, England, 
this year, in a lock-out of painters, the workmen, 
independently of their employers, undertook oper- 
ations directly. During this year also, at Man- 
chester, guilds have been organized to meet the 
need of new housing. The new building guild 
has the approval of the unions. Here, as often in 
British labor progress, intellectuals took the lead. 
S. G. Hobson made the Manchester suggestion, 
and said it was an attempt “to marry the labor 
monopoly of the organized workers to the credit of 
the public authorities.’ Of the relation of the 
laborers to the municipality the leading writer on 
Guildism, G. D. H. Cole, says: 


“The right course is for the two to strike a bar- 
gain. The workers supply, and collectively control, 
the labor, including the technicians and administra- 
tors, as well as the manual workers. The muncipal- 
ity advances the money and takes the houses when 
they are finished. That is all that is required. As 
for the employer, he doesn’t come in at all unless he 
gets a job as worker or manager under the guild. 

“Tf the building workers can win industrial free- 
dom and eliminate employers and private profit in 
this way, will they not be setting a fashion which 
other industries will be able to follow? ‘This plan 
for a building guild is so essentially simple that 
every worker ought to be wondering why it never 
occurred to him before, and every one who, like 


172 The Advancing Hour 


myself, has been theorizing about national guilds 
for years past ought to be ashamed of himself for 
having been content to theorize for so long.” 


To realize the fundamental difference between 
the codperative movement and universal commun- 
ism or strict Marxian socialism one need only fix 
his mind on the fact that one member of a coopera- 
tive association may own one share and another 
may own fifty. The one gets fifty times as much 
interest on his money as the other. Similarly with 
the saving distributed according to the amount pur- 
chased. There is no forced equality. The person 
who has bought the most goods in the course of the 
year gets the largest rebate. It is called profit, but 
actually it is merely a correction of the cost. Again 
in payment for work there is no attempt at uniform- 
ity, although the minimum wage principle owes 
much to codperative example. Beyond the mini- 
mum necessity the more a person is supposed to be 
worth the more he is paid. Nevertheless the sym- 
pathy of moderate socialists is easily explicable, 
because what the codperative system does tend to 
do is at every point to work against the exploitation 
of the consumer and the worker by the capital con- 
trol. The consumer is the principal person consid- 
ered, and the worker, employee or producer, within 
the consumer society, has had thus far little special 
representation, although his representation is likely 


The Answer of Codperation 173 


toincrease. The bottom difference between the pre- 
vailing system and the codperative system is that 
in the present system profit can be made by taking 
advantage of the needs of the consumer, whereas 
in a cooperative enterprise there is no exploiting 
profit. When there is a temporary shortage there 
will be an effort to end it, but there will be no in- 
crease in price unless a permanent increase is found 
in the cost. A general rise in wages will increase 
the cost price if it actually does increase the cost, 
which it may or may not do. A similar principle 
would apply to variations in the supply of raw ma- 
terials, and to a changing proportion of producers 
to consumers. 

The general principle of increased control by 
labor is more easily introduced into codperative 
enterprise than into those controlled by private capi- 
tal, since there are no such sharply conflicting mo- 
tives. The control by the members is democratic in 
its nature, and the employees can easily become 
members. One share of stock, as far as control goes, 
gives as much power as a thousand. ‘The Swiss are 
introducing workshop committees into their co- 
operative associations. The movement represented 
by the Whitley report is not likely to find serious 
obstacles in cooperative organizations. The repre- 
sentation of the producers in the great consumers’ 
associations must not, however, be compared with 


174 The ‘Advancing Hour 


any such ideal as is represented either by syndical- 
ism or by guild socialism, where the producer 
claims the entire or predominating control, regard- 
tess of the interests of the consumer. Nor must it 
be confused with the question of those producing 
associations, coOperative in name, which exist for 
the purpose of making a profit, in the ordinary 
sense, for the members, in the open market, and 
therefore are not codperative at all in the sense of 
the codperative movement. Inside the codperative 
movement there are producing branches, but they 
produce only for members. The consumer is the 
person in control of this movement, but the degree 
of his sympathy with the producing laborer, as com- 
pared with the sympathy that private capital shows 
toward him, is illustrated by the fact that in many 
codperative associations membership in a trade 
union is made compulsory among the employees. 
The difference in spirit is indicated from another 
angle in a remark by a laborer to Leonard 8. 
Woolf,’ one of the best known contemporary writ- 
ers on coéperation: “Of course there’s a difference 
between the relations of an employee to a capitalis- 
tic employer and those of an employee to a codpera- 
tive employer. The object of the first is to smash 
his employer, for the only way to argue with capi- 
talism is to knock it on the head. But practically 
no cooperative employee wants to smash codpera- 


The Answer of Codperation 175 


tion: it’s almost as much in the interest of the 
employee to spread cooperation as it is in the inter- 
ests of the codperator.”’ 

It is easy to give misleading optimistic figures 
about the growth of the movement but the fairest 
British critics say that it has on the whole thus far 
succeeded only in the distributive trades, in bank- 
ing and insurance, and in the manufacture of food- 
stuffs, clothing, furniture, and hardware. Of 
course these are all important branches of daily life, 
and American mothers should be interested in the 
fact that in Basle, Switzerland, codperatives control 
the milk supply. To have milk controlled as it is 
with us is an absurd social crime. In many of the 
largest industries, such as transportation, mining, 
textiles, engineering, metal-working, and machine- 
making, little or nothing has been done by the co- 
operatives. The result is-that, although in Great 
Britain the membership of the movement is over 
three and a half million the number of employees 
is less than one hundred and fifty thousand. Mr. 
Woolf, discussing the fact that for such reasons 
the employees will scarcely be able to exercise 
a great influence on the movement, goes on to 
say that for the workers actually to get control 
would be of very doubtful benefit, as the associ- 
ation would then cease to be primarily an as- 
sociation of consumers. “In form a consumer’s 


176 The Advancing Hour 


society, in practice it would be a producer’s so- 
ciety, and immediately it would become subject 
to those dangers and diseases which have made 
the history of producers’ codperation largely a 
history of great hopes and repeated failures.” In 
Mr. Woolf’s opinion what has caused these failures 
is the break-down of discipline. It is one thing to 
give employees a very important voice: it is an- 
other thing to expect discipline to continue if they 
take orders from foremen and managers in the day- 
time and sit in judgment on them in the evening. 
We all know, since Taylor, how large a part of suc- 
cess and failure lies in management. ‘This is not a 
reason for keeping the employee out of manage- 
ment. On the contrary, it is a reason for getting 
him in. Limitation is on such a kind and a degree 
of control as would mean that the interest of those 
in predominating control was stronger or more im- 
mediate in something else than it was in the ulti- 
mate success of the business. “It is here that time 
after time the self-governing workshop and the 
association of producers have broken down.” The 
final problem, by no means yet worked out, is so 
to divide the power that all elements will be pro- 
tected, and each element will be specially 
protected in those aspects with which it is particu- 
larly concerned. 

In his pamphlet, “The Control of Industry by 


The Answer of Codperation 177 


Codperatives and Trade Unionists,’ Mr. Woolf 
says: 


“Many persons, seeing the appalling results of 
this system of production upon the wage-earning 
class, have jumped to the conclusion that the root 
of the system lies in the wage system. Abolish the 
wage system! is the cry. Two alternative systems 
which have been proposed are at the moment at- 
tracting much attention—Copartnership and Syn- 
dicalism. ‘The idea in Copartnership is to give the 
workers a share in the profits, that.share being in- 
vested in the capital of the business, so that the 
workers have a voice in the control of the busi- 
ness. Perfect Copartnership only exists where the 
whole capital of the business belongs to the workers 
in that business. ‘This is codperation of producers, 
and it exists and has proved successful in a few 
businesses such as the Equity Boot Works and 
Woodhouse Mills in England, and the famous iron 
works at Guise in France. There is no doubt that 
genuine Copartnership—where the worker really 
controls production—does protect the worker’s in- 
terests. But it strikes at the root of Codperative 
production by consumers. Copartnership produces 
for profit; we produce for use. At the root of our 
production lies the theory that consumers are the 
people who should have the right to say what ought 
to be produced. The Wholesale produces what it 
knows two and one-half million Codperators want 
to use; a Copartnership concern produces what it 
thinks people in general will pay a certain price for. 

“Syndicalism is a proposed form of production 
which has a certain likeness to Copartnership. 
Under Syndicalism, instead of each particular busi- 


178 The Advancing Hour 


ness being in the control of the workers in that 
business, the whole of each trade would be in the 
control of the workers in that trade. Syndicalism 
is largely a revolutionary doctrine, a revolt against 
the tyranny of the capitalist system. It contains 
much of extreme interest and importance. It also 
contains many contradictory theories. In some 
forms it is scarcely distinguishable from trade 
unionism. But in its more advanced forms its aim 
is to organize the whole of production from the 
point of view of the workers as producers; while 
our aim is to organize some parts of production 
from the point of view of the workers as consumers. 
But while the basis of Codperation and Syndicalism 
is different, there is no reason why they should not 
learn from each other, nor why a system of indus- 
try should not be evolved, in which consumers and 
workers are equally represented. This is not the 
place to discuss what the foundations of society 
would be in future.” 


If the codperative movement is in its nature more 
democratic and more sound than unrestricted capi- 
talism, state socialism, syndicalism, or guild social- 
ism, the degree of importance which it will have in 
solving our industrial troubles will depend on its 
ability to increase in size. There are a number of 
countries in which it is already an important detail 
in life. There is one country, Russia, in which its 
part in national life became and may yet remain 
a major one, and its high importance is assured in 
Denmark. If it could grow until its role in the 


The Answer of Codperation 179 


national life of the principal countries was greater 
than that of capitalism for profit, the whole tem- 
per of the world would be changed. Such a growth 
may be improbable, but it is not impossible. Thus 
far it has had almost exclusively a working class 
membership, which of course has greatly limited its 
field. What it could produce has been limited by 
what its members could use. The future to which 
it may look forward must depend on whether the 
middle classes also go into it largely. 

We must remember that codperation is less than 
a century old and that its more rapid growth is 
comparatively recent. The little retail store at 
Rochdale was started in 1844 by 23 discouraged 
workingmen. To-day the British consumers’ whole- 
sale organizations are producing from 25 to 30 
millions pounds of goods per year. The British 
mills at Manchester grind more than a million 
sacks of flour in a year. In Glasgow the codpera- 
tive bakery is the largest bakery in the world. 
There is enough foreign trade to have led the co- 
operatives to own their own ships. In Denmark 
it may fairly be said that codperation has taken so 
large a part in the success of farming that it would 
be difficult to conceive of Danish life without it. It 
has almost all grown up since the war of 1864, from 
a felt need, and it has put the national industry, 
farming, on a high plane of success. Switzerland 


180 The Advancing Hour 


is not only one of the countries where the institution 
of codperation is most widely spread, but it has 
recently been adding new steps in its development, 
including courses in the University of Zurich for 
the education of managers and officials in codpera- 
tive enterprises. 

Russia is undoubtedly, even beyond Denmark, the 
country where cooperation has played the largest 
part. Itis not up to the Danish, British, or German 
standard in some respects, but it is ahead of all 
others in the degree to which it is accepted by the 
whole people. In Chapter VI there has been given a 
sketch of the spirit in which the movement has 
grown. The war saw a great extension. Industry 
was wholly unequal to the strain put on it, and the 
Czar’s government turned to the zemstvos and the 
cooperatives to help. Big business, after the Bol- 
shevik revolution, was operated by the government 
and went lamentably to pieces. Small business 
grew to take its place. Private small business was 
extensive, but profiteering in its methods. Only 
the codperatives represented a large and honest 
and efficient working body. The figures are diffi- 
cult, since there is so much overlapping, but it is 
probable that there were nearly fifteen millions of 
codperators at the beginning of the war and that 
there were nearly twice that number by the begin- 
ning of 1920. A remarkable step was taken in 1918 


The Answer of Codperation 181 


and 1919 in spontaneous organization of a great 
body of producers and in their informal relation to 
the existing codperative bodies. In Russian life an 
important part has long been played by the so- 
called cottage industries, which produce many of 
the articles most needed by the peasants. In 1915 
there were 15,000,000 peasants engaged in cottage 
industries, mainly farmers filling in their winter 
time. During the early part of the Bolshevik 
régime the local bodies representing these cottage 
industries decided to create a central body, to study 
demand and to give information about requirements 
and market conditions. ‘This permanent bureau 
called a congress in May, 1918, in Moscow. It in- 
vited the Kustars, or persons who make things at 
home, the cottage industrials; and the Kustar co- 
operatives, or those cottage industrials who are or- 
ganized codperatively. It also invited representa- 
tives of the municipal and social organizations 
which have business relations with the Kustars. The 
meeting agreed upon the need for an All-Russian 
Coéperative Council, which should have for its end 
the organization of cottage industries and of small 
industries into artels or unions. ‘The difficulties 
growing out of political conditions were discussed. 
One of the greatest difficulties was the lack of certain 
raw materials. [There had been some successful 
interference with the codperatives getting what they 


182 The Advancing Hour 


needed of those raw materials which are produced 
by large units, since that class of materials can be 
seized by the government. The raw materials that 
are local in their origin were in the control of the 
individual farmers and local bodies, and the govern- 
ment was less able to interfere. The movement in 
May led to a meeting in Moscow in August, 1918, 
and another and more formal one in February, rgro9. 
Besides representatives of the Kustars the movement 
included: 

(1) All the big central coéperative associations. 

(2) The Mossow Narodny Bank. 

(3) The All-Russian Union of Consumers 
Societies. : 

(4) Many local codperatives and their artels. 

This congress went ahead to introduce system into 
the cottage industries. It sought to take away the 
fortuitous nature of cottage production and dis- 
tribution and to study the relation of any branch 
to the whole industrial situation in the nation or 
the region. It further discussed the political 
situation. 

The call for the 1919 congress, giving the pro- 
gram, was signed by G. V. Petrov, at the request 
of the organizing committee, and I give a digest of 
parts of it to show the point of view: 


“In the work of reconstruction, made necessary 
by the devastating events since 1914, the disaster 


The Answer of Codperation 183 


that has been met by big industry has increased 
many hundred per cent the importance of small in- 
dustries as a producing factor. This importance 
may be temporary, but during the present condi- 
tions it cannot be much reduced. ‘To bring about 
the required increase in the production of necessi- 
ties it is requisite to have great help from small 
industry. Energetic and systematic activity is re- 
quired of the small industries, not only because of 
our traditional motive of self-preservation and self- 
defense against the economic violence of big busi- 
ness, but also because the conditions of the time 
have put on small industries a task that is on a na- 
tional scale. Now as formerly small industry has 
but one way out, and that is broad and deep co- 
operation of its forces and its means. The process 
of the codperation of industries has always been a 
hard and long job, but at present it is economically 
easier. The idea of codperative unions for buying, 
for selling, and for labor itself is now less in need 
of proving its essential usefulness. Of course the 
technical difficulties in the way of codperation and 
unification of small industries are greater on ac- 
count of a situation that has led us to the verge of 
starvation or at least to malnutrition and to the 
use of unacceptable substitutes for accustomed food. 
But this condition has led every one who formerly 
ignored codperation to turn to it. This is because 
in the storm of the ruin of general economic life 
the small industries have preserved themselves 
more than any other force for future productive 
work. Working without stopping during the time 
when the big industries were dying the small in- 
dustries inevitably took on the various character- 


184 The Advancing Hour 


istics of codperation. Even credit codperation of 
all kinds is using the small producers more and 
more in its work. The state powers have not been 
able to get along without the small producers and 
they invite them into their organization on the basis 
of their labor communes or on the basis of their 
professional unions. In a word the whole trend in 
small industry is toward organization either on co- 
operative, communistic or some mixed basis. We 
have felt the necessity of getting clear in our minds 
and making an effort of the united will and mind 
of the small industries. The people who have taken 
part in cooperative organization want to define their 
bases and the tendency of the future work. The 
congress will have to express itself on the question 
of whether it still remains true that the organiza- 
tion of the cottage industrials on a codperative basis 
is the most pressing and important aim of that in- 
dustry. ‘The congress will have to analyze the ques- 
tion of whether the industry has been changed in 
the process of introducing a socialistic organization, 
and if so how much. It must decide on the forms 
and methods of codperative activity that will be 
the most likely to form a good national coéperative 
organism. Is codperation to take the leadership in 
the general questions of credit, consumption, dis- 
tributione Are the codperative associations going 
to do this? This is not an academic question. It 
has the most pressing importance. There are ques- 
tions which have never been answered. What about 
the professional (Bolshevik) unions in small indus- 
tries? What about the extent of their interference 
in these small industries? Here is a letter from one 
of our provincial units. It says: “The lack of clear- 


The Answer of Codperation 185 


ness and the treachery of the ruling circles toward 
cooperation in general and toward artisan codpera- 
tion in particular; the perfectly arbitrary relation 
toward cooperation of local authorities, plus a 
whole mass of questions about the organization of 
the cottage industrial codperation, will demand a 
general solution. All this speaks for the immediate 
calling of the representatives and partakers in in- 
dustrial codperation. Everything which we work- 
ers on the spot see and hear, every day and every 
hour, must be expressed, without color but without 
reserve. If we at the conference are able to find a 
common language with the governing power we 
will gladly work with it. If we do not hear from 
it what we want to hear we shall know that we can 
expect help from nowhere; and if we see that the 
condition of codperation is hopeless we will get out. 
We cannot delay further.” 


The call then goes on to give a program in detail. 
This program included among others the problems 
of transportation, competition with commercial and 
industrial capitalism, private enterprises, individ- 
ual cottage industry and codperative cottage indus- 
try, the buying of raw material, the disposal of 
produce, how to obtain a supply of half-manufac- 
tured goods for completing processes, instruction 
among cottage artisans, publication, specialists, a 
polytechnical school, credit, finance, legal help, in- 
surance, sanitation, wages, profit, responsibility 
toward other codperatives, responsibilities toward 
outsiders, occupational diseases. 


186 The Advancing Hour 


The question put with so much feeling here, of 
the life and death outlook for codperation as it faces 
a powerful military state socialistic government, 
is still in the process of working out; and on the 
result depends much of the future of Russia, and 
not a little of the future of the world. Within a 
year the number of unions affiliated with the 
Kustarsbyt was increased from 14 to 100. The 
number of peasants constituting the membership is 
estimated at from 10,000 to 15,000. They supply 
practically the whole country with boots. Of 
household implements it is estimated that they pro- 
duce 80 per cent. They make the coarser cloth. 
They are the tar-distillers. ‘They are the carpenters 
and harness-makers. ‘They also furnish some lux- 
uries, as lace, silk, jewelry, and toys. An interest- 
ing article by A. E. Malakhov, formerly chairman 
of the Kustarsbyt, or Central Union of the Cottage 
Industrials, calling attention to the second anni- 
versary of the federation in August, 1920, says: 


‘Before the war, Germany imported yearly into 
Russia up to 1,000 tons of aniline dyes. Only some 
350 tons of these were known to reach the clients 
of the importers among the textile manufacturers, 
while the destination of the remaining 650 tons re- 
mained for a long time a mystery. In order to solve 
it, the German importers undertook a special in- 
vestigation, which showed that the dyes are bought 
up by the Kustari. And it must be borne in mind 


The Answer of Codperation 187 


that while practically all the mills turn out dyed 
tissues, only a part of the Kustari followed this 
course. 

“We Russians have been taught from infancy that 
our Kustar industries are a relic of the period of a 
primitive economy, and that they will vanish like a 
soap bubble before the approaching big industry. 
Practically the whole of the advanced public opin- 
ion of Russia accepted this teaching as the genuine 
truth. The class governing now in Russia—the 
proletariat, which itself is an infant of the big in- 
dustry—has long ago proclaimed the watchword: 
‘Death to the Kustar trade; long live the big in- 
dustries!’ However, up till now the watchword 
has not been put into effect. Up till now one thing 
is clear, and must be put on record. Notwithstand- 
ing the sympathies of the Government, the big in- 
dustry collapsed like a house of cards, while the 
contemptible Kustar trades, predestined to die a 
natural death, have taken upon their shoulders the 
task of providing the nation with all the necessaries 
of life. 

“Now, even the enemies of Kustar industries 
have had to confess that the latter appeared as 
the only force during the Revolution capable if 
not to restore, at least to sustain the economic life 
of the country. 

‘Who knows, perhaps thanks to the Kustar trades 
alone, Russia will conquer in the end. ‘The peas- 
ants shoulder the whole burden of the fight for a 
better social order, in supporting and supplying the 
population with food, dress, and fuel.” 


Mr. Malakhoy, whose hostility to the Bolsheviks 


188 The Advancing Hour 


caused him to leave Russia, gave in The Russian 
Coodperator, London, an account of the situation, of 
which the following are essential parts: 


“Tn their fight against Codperation, as represent- 
ing middle-class interests, the Bolsheviki suffered a 
complete defeat, while the codperative principles 
were fully endorsed by the population. 

‘ven in cases when the Soviet authorities dis- 
played their arms against Codperation and subjected 
it to violence, their acts did not and could not affect 
the substance of the movement. ‘This was strikingly 
demonstrated in the nationalization of the Moscow 
Narodny Bank and the Centrosoyus. 

“In the first case the shares of the M. N. B. re- 
mained with the codperative organizations. ‘The 
shares may be worthless, but in the proper books of 
the bank we shall find entries testifying that the bank 
Owes a given sum to this or other codperative or- 
ganization, which sum coincides accurately with the 
value of the shares paid by that organization. The 
management of the bank is elected as before by Co- 
operation: the Discount Committee is composed as 
before of representatives of Codperation. 

“The same happened with the Centrosoyus. It 
is true that commissaries have been introduced and 
are exercising control. But Cooperation never 
evaded proper control. The management of the 
Centrosoyus is responsible to Codperation; the in- 
itiative remains in the hands of Codperation, just as 
the economic and administrative side of the business. 
The decree has succeeded only in labeling distribu- 
tive stores with a new name—‘communes.’ 

“All the other All-Russian organizations, as well 
as the local unions and individual cooperative so- 


The Answer of Codperation 189 


cieties, are free from nationalization, and even from 
control. The foundation of Codperation is intact 
and not destroyed, because the local unions have not 
been destroyed, and all the Soviet decrees remain 
but scraps of paper. ‘The attempts at nationali- 
zation, as far as they have been undertaken, did not 
touch or affect either the initiative or the self-man- 
agement or the principles and ideas of Cooperation. 
“Even more. Numbers of new codperative socie- 
ties and organizations have sprung up all over the 
country, mostly of the productive and agricultural 
type. Numbers of new unions and several new 
central organizations have come into existence. 
“All insurance companies have been abolished. 
Cooperation, however, has created its insurance or- 
ganization—the All-Russian Cooperative Insurance 
Union—and the latter is not only not persecuted by 
the authorities, but they are rather anxious to insure 
with this Union all the cattle in the country, and 
negotiations to that effect are being carried on. 
“Not only do all the central cooperative organi- 
zations which were created before the Bolshevist 
era continue to live and to work, but under the Bol- 
sheviki, a number of new cooperative centers have 
been called into life. The building of the coopera- 
tive edifice goes on as before. Economic organt- 
zations, such as the Central Association of Fruit 
Growers and Market Gardeners, the Potato Union, 
the Codperative Grain, the ‘Kustarsbyt,’ and others, 
and several codrdinating centers for Agricultural 
and Industrial Codperation have been established. 
“The economic changes wrought by the crisis, 
scarcity of goods, breakdown of transport, and the 
communistic policy, have introduced some new ele- 
ments in the work of codperation. At present, the 


190 The Advancing Hour 


only economic force, the only live force which works 
and creates values and goods, is represented by the 
small farmer, the artisan and the kustar. And it is 
to them that cooperation has turned most of its at- 
tention and adapts its work and organization. It is 
through them that the population strives to improve 
its economic position, to set up anew its industries, 
proceeding on cooperative lines. And it can be said 
without exaggeration that the future of the country 


lies with the newly arisen and growing productive 


and agricultural codperation. 

‘““A certain change of front is also noticeable in 
distributive codperation. Although its All-Russian 
center (the Centrosoyus) is now entrusted with the 
task of distributing commodities on a national scale, 
but very little is being done in the sphere of organi- 
zing the producer. When the crisis under which the 
country is laboring is caused, not by over-produc- 
tion, but by absence of goods, there is nothing to dis- 
tribute. In addition, distributive codperation has 
split into two, the labor cooperative societies having 
taken a line of their own, and having become a kind 
of State organization attached to the Supreme 
Economic Soviet. 

‘“At present the Centrosoyus embraces only rural 
distributive societies and unions. But this fact has 
called forth a remarkable unity amongst all types 
of codperation (excluding the labor codperative or- 
ganizations). ‘he struggle which all forms of co- 
operation had to wage against the Bolshevist decrees 
and policy has also been responsible for this closing 
of ranks. There is no sign of antagonism between 
the productive and distributivé branches of the 
movement, because the majority of consumers are 


ees 


The Answer of Codperation 191 


now the same producers, being organized in the 
respective organizations.” 


While the war-record of codperation has been 
nowhere else so dramatic as in Russia, there have 
been plenty of striking developments. Before the 
war the governments of Germany and Austria had 
frowned on the growth of codperation, which was 
not an unnatural thing for centralized despotisms to 
do. During the war they turned toward it for help. 
I question whether they can ever be unsympathetic 
toward it again, if the trend of the world is demo- 
cratic. 

Believing that codperation is the soundest of the 
existing devices for purifying our system of eco- 
nomic life, I naturally take an intense interest in 
the small beginnings in America. Before the war 
almost nothing had been accomplished. ‘This was 
not unnatural since the codperative movement 
sprang out of needs which have been heretofore 
little felt in America. Codperative stores were 
started from time to time, but to a large extent they 
failed. To make any codperative enterprise suc- 
ceed requires the same skillful management that 
private business requires. ‘The poor people who 
usually start them have neither the training nor the 
time. To enter into competition with mail order, 
houses, chain stores, and department stores, as well 


192 The Advancing Hour 


as the ordinary small store, is no easy undertaking. 
Often there is direct hostility. I have sometimes 
found this among business men even in Denmark 
and England, particularly where there is a feeling 
that taxation laws favor the codperatives. Here 
there is not that reason for criticism, but on the 
contrary everything has been against codperative 
effort. Our banking habits have made it harder 
than in other countries to obtain credit. Charges 
have frequently been made that the hostility of com- 
peting tradesmen has been so effective as to induce 
wholesale establishments and railroads to refuse or 
unreasonably to delay supplies. The real obstacle, 
however, has certainly been in the state of mind of 
the people. This state of mind, this indifference, 
is now apparently changing. During 1918, 1919, 
and 1920 there has been keen interest. The causes 
of the eagerness seem to have been the high cost 
of living and the growing realization of the nature 
of the economic conflict. The second cause is ex- 
pressed by Mr. Gustavson in the speech from which 
a quotation appears at the head of this chapter. It 
cannot be pretended that there is the solid founda- 
tion for expansion given by the laborious prepara- 
tion in the European countries, but there is a vague 
and large American enterprise that may suddenly 
collapse, or on the other hand may accomplish 
something new. The effort to federalize the various 


EPC i 2 
~~, \ 


a a ee Oe 


The Answer of Codperation 193 


state codperatives has been serious since 1918, with 
British experience as a model. ‘The middle west 
and the far west contain the most active centres. 
Nineteen-twenty has been notable for an attempt 
to organize the farmers and the laborers into the 
same cooperative movement. ‘The word codpera- 
tive has been used loosely in this new movement and 
no doubt most of the real work still remains to be 
done, but the mere fact that big labor unions and 
farmer unions are excitedly attempting codperation 
means much. Rochdale may be the model for what 
finally happens, or we may find new American 
forms. (There is room in our country for many 
modes of united economic effort by the people, and 
every one of them that is seriously carried out will 
be education toward a more cooperative, simple, 
and kindly life. It is not only in its actual accom- 
plishments that the codperative movement mitigates 
the régime of private capital, but notably also in 
the education it carries about what can be done by 
ordinary people. It destroys some ancient and 
hard-worked fallacies. For example, a favorite 
argument of stand-patters against higher wages and 
against profit-sharing is based on the part played 
by capital in modern life. One of this school will 
first demonstrate that the rich man of to-day does 
not put his earnings in a sock, eat them up, or give 
them to chorus girls. They go into extension of 


194 The Advancing Hour 


business, thus causing more goods to be produced 
in the world, which is triumphantly pointed out to 
be a better thing for the laborer than it would be 
to have all the surplus wealth in the world divided, 
which would give the individual only a few dollars 
more. The argument leaves out two considerations. 
One is that labor also is capable of using its earn- 
ings as capital to be invested, and this point is 
demonstrated by the codperative movement all over 
the world. ‘The other point is that production to- 
day creates a large volume of things that the world 
would be just as well without, and fails to create 
many things bitterly needed, such as adequate 
houses. A world in which labor played a more de- 


termining part in production and distribution would 


not be likely to do worse. Kings used to argue that 
they could rule for the general welfare much bet- 
ter than a mob could. Barons and other favored 
individuals formed a class and clearly demon- 
strated that the world would deteriorate in pros- 
perity, culture, and virtue if the power were taken 
away from them. The arguments against political 
democracy have been the same in the past that the 
arguments against industrial democracy are to-day; 
and many American business men discuss these 
matters with the easy superiority of a twelfth cen- 
tury noble. 

Discontent with the degree of power exercised by 


ee ee ee eee ee 


The ‘Answer of Codperation 195 


big business has been a spur to the recent American 
movement. Nebraska farmers undertook to start 
their own beet sugar factory. Codperative 
slaughter-houses have been urged with much force 
as a needed answer to the packing situation. Plans 
for the codperative furnishing of flour and meal 
have naturally been much to the front. As one- 
man flour mills have been in successful operation 
it is absurd that wheat should not be turned into 
flour and bread near where it is grown. ‘The 
tendency to create monopoly of one necessity in 
Chicago, another in Minneapolis, another in New 
York, has been definitely fostered by the railroads, 
just as the building up of big cities at the expense 
of smaller places has been fostered. A reversal of 
the long and short haul policy would have been 
enough, all alone, to have saved us from much of 
the difficulty of living that we now face. It costs 
more to do business in a big city than in the country, 
and it. costs more to live in the city. Obviously 
there is a saving in having factories located near 
the source of the needed raw material. Yet we send 
the raw material all across the country and the fin- 
ished. product all the way back again. 

The following are extracts from a report made 
in 1918 by C..C. McChord, of the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission: 


196 The Advancing Hour 


“Tow freight rates have been initiated and main- 
tained for years from producing centers to impor- 
tant junction and jobbing cities and towns. ‘To 
towns beyond higher rates, both actually and rela- 
tively, have been maintained. Through rates from 
factories or great producing territories to towns be- 
yond the jobbing centers are made up of a combina- 
tion of the rates to such centers and those beyond. 
The result is, in many instances, to deprive the 
country point of just rates. ‘The following table 
gives comparisons of through rates on certain ar- 
ticles in carloads and less than carloads now in effect 
to Cincinnati, Ohio; Williamsburg, Ky.; Chicago, 
Ill.; Omaha, Nebr.; Kansas City, Mo.; Alliance, 
Nebr., and Dodge City, Kans., from New York, 
N. Y., together with distances, as illustrative and 
representative of thousands of similar rate situa- 
tions throughout the country, and showing the 
handicap under which the country towns are com- 
pelled to do business: 


Less Less 
Car- | than Car- | than 
loads. | car- loads. | car- 
oads loads 
COTTON PIECE GOODS. Cents | Cents BOOTS AND SHOES. Cents | Cents 
per 100| per 100 per 100\ per 100 
From New York, N. Y., to— lbs. lbs. ||From New York, N. Y., to— lbs. lbs. 
Cincinnati, Ohio, 758 miles...| ..... 72 Cincmnatiy -h ie cee tke 08 
Williamsburg, Ky., 961 Williamsburg? osc. ous ceee laa 1743 
miles Hie are Cae areas Sine 125 Chicaeor evoke ¢ dce ates eee oe 112% 
Chicago, Ill., 908 miles......} ..... Tr2 436i)!’ Omaha da ee eo hee, ee 201 
Omaha, ‘Nebr., 1,400 miles...} ..... 138 Kansas Citys seas. crises ae tae 201 
Kansas Cit Mo., 1,509 miles| ..... 138 Alliance. Joy sucess eneee 318% 
Alliance, A bas I, '820 miles..| ..... asesoi)4 Dodge City aiits coe seco eee 308% 
Dodge City, "Kans. op FOX 
wiles 4.0. ive eel accor eee | Macama 242 
CLOTHING. 
HATS AND CAPS. 
From New York, N. Y., to— From New York, N. Y., to— 
CinemMngtt sevice. ae eee eee he | es neers 08 Cineinna tine cit aivcn aieals arta crete 8 
Wilhamstnrgs Jisics ik hy oe sf adie £7454) 1' “Williamsburg 34); sass sieve are ae 174% 
ICAZO Ge Mea cled cabin Gael Bee TI2FO 0 (ChiCARO MA aes ee Me Rie hare pee 112% 
Omahati siete tac emetic ra tek 201 Omiaha Oana er a meets ch an eee 201 
Mansas Citye is pa acetates 201 Kansas.City 05 d.asihiosee earner 201 
Plante ss) honetc nme sp See ek boos alee Br8 Seiler Alliances, clos vce Ulaiee tere Oa tee 318% 
Dodge ‘City shncor we Ms sence aie $0834|) ¢ Dodge City. os Al, oli ae ee 30844 


The Answer of Codperation 197 


Less Less 
Car- | than Car- | than 
loads. | car- loads. | car- 
loads oads 
CROCKERY. Cents | Cents SUGAR.—continued, Cents | Cents 
per 100| per 100 per 100)\ per 100 
From New York, N. Y., to— lbs. lbs. |\From New York, N. Y., to— | lbs. lbs. 
MMII ATE Sled 25 4k ons ata 30%| 52 rahe: a ee cueee eee 61 100 
AWDSeMISDULEY. G6 0K oles 6 he 8314} 104)%4|| Kansas City.............. 61 100 
DPOIPES od id. Sintec «3's o.<i0-6 « 45 60 Alliance: es ite ie eee 117%| 171% 
Ppinmie ce i BF Boia dichalc s 77%] 110 DodgesCity 45 Jee aoe 954| 167% 
OAS TIE gs dec exe 2s shh ole 774%) 110 
PMRHCOU a 7d.8 oe xi S28 131 193 COFFEE. 
UTA GT SE \}t29 192% 
ec New York, N. Y., to— V4 
FCANNAULD se sible pod hare wee 39 52 
ah ood Williamsburg LVS HR IAN 86 | 0834 
eae New York! N.Y, to— MOZOs dials dg eons he busi 45 60 
EE 9 Be ee 45\%4| 72% ease Fae ea een hc antes a 0174} 100 
ait { Brees CHEV Ayo ae ae ek 6134} 100 
| ecegeialy nk eR Roe) eee 104 3 139 Wands 3. ta 171% 
bate TEL ae LUNES At ee Re 2 : OE GS ik 
Omahe. De tery | é 4 i faa y4|| Dodge City.............. 10614] 165 
MoarIsas UICY Gh aac tise va hes 8 o1%| 140% veh 
WARNTICTs ss Vin avian os meiees 163 207% : 
BGR CLCIUVE. Ue gh oo iw es 3% 159 247 || From New York, N. eye 
Cincinnati s, weve tha skint ws 85%} 98 
SUGAR. Williamsburg st's, 24... ¢eaer 162 174% 
CMICA ROL Nite esha ciate, dee ie 99 112} 
From New York, N. Y., to— Omann. 2's. ives v ia Coy asd 167 201 
EIN AL Pe discs Haley le wie «' 30)4] 52 Kansas Citviigists See sears 167 201 
MyMMaMISDUTE: 2. 125 oc o's > 86 Oosal} meallancer. «os dee ahigco ae as 26714| 318% 
ORT ae 0 ig 2 aaa 45 60 Dodve\Gity ee eo eee sie 264%) 308% 


“The following table gives the number of towns, 
as shown by the census of 1910, under 5,000 popula- 
tion in the States named, where industries might be 
located and where every opportunity would be af- 
forded employees to make the most of life under 
ideal conditions: | 


Wisconsin..... 2,480 70 2I 25 ||Kentucky.... | 5,290 52 14 10 
OM Altes < shah 2,070 02 as S$) Virginia: 32: 5,160 41 13 12 


Nebraska...... 1,510 Bra 17 21 ||West Virginia. | 3,800 44 18 9 


“Thoughtful study should now be given to the 
equalization of rates for freight transportation, and 


198 The Advancing Hour 


as to whether higher rates should for the future be 
permitted for shorter than for longer distances over 
the same line or route, the shorter being included 
within the longer distance, and whether combina- 
tions of rates and transit privileges that now un- 
duly favor certain jobbing and junction points 
should be canceled and reasonable through rates es- 
tablished to all points. Transportation by boat on 
our rivers and coast lines should be encouraged, 
to relieve rail carriers at congested cities and ports. 
Steps have already been taken under Federal con- 
trol to divert traffic from congested North Atlantic 
ports to those of the South and to the Gulf of 
Mexico. Rates should be made and facilities pro- 
vided so that each port of the United States, from 
Galveston, Texas, to Bangor, Maine, shall receive 
its share of traffic under the most economical trans- 
portation conditions. Relatively the same facilities 
should be furnished the factory that ships one car- 
load a day as the one that ships ten or more car- 
loads. ‘The opportunity to do a manufacturing 
business at a profit should be afforded at any point 
in the country. The supply of raw material and the 
possible field of consumption will dictate the loca- 
tion.” 


Concerning Mr. McChord’s report, the follow- 
ing comments were made in the United States Sen- 
ate: 


Mr. Pittman: “The conditions that are caus- 
ing the congestion now, and that have caused the 
congestion in the great cities of this country for 
years, are not decreasing but are steadily increas- 


The Answer of Codperation 199 


ing. Great factories are being built in certain sec- 
tions because they cannot be built anywhere else 
and compete. As the factories grow men are 
drawn from all over the country to those factory 
towns, and as they are drawn there and labor be- 
comes more plentiful at such points, again do the 
factories increase and the cumulative process ever 
continues. 

“The result is inevitable. It means that a great 
country that is not only fit to live in but is the most 
wholesome place in the world in which to live is 
absolutely abandoned. 

“Not only that, but the men who could be fed 
close to the farms must have their food transported 
clear across the country at the expense of the peo- 
ple and to the obstruction of the railroads that are 
the arteries of trade. 

“We all know what is meant by the long and short 
haul. We all know what is meant by the back 
haul. We know that the railroad companies would 
ship freight from Chicago to San Francisco cheaper 
than they would ship to intermediate points. We 
know they would ship freight cheaper from Chi- 
cago to San Francisco or Sacramento than to Reno, 
Nevada. 

Mr. King: “Or to Salt Lake City.” 

Mr. Pittman: “Or to Salt Lake City, or to Og- 
den, and just as cheap as they ship it to Denver. 
We all know that they would charge more to deliver 
freight from the town of Ogden to a point 25 miles 
out than they would charge to deliver it from San 
Francisco to the same point; that they would charge 
more to deliver freight from Reno to a place 25 
miles out of Reno along the railroad than they 


200 The Advancing Hour 


would from San Francisco to the same point, and 
yet San Francisco would be 300 miles away. Why? 
For the very purpose of giving San Francisco that 
field of trade and depriving the local States of the 
same trade. This means that Nevada wheat, wool, 
meats, hides, and other products must go to San 
Francisco for manufacture or reshipment. It means 
that no important manufacturing plant or wholesale 
establishment can exist in Nevada. 

“T do not know whether the railroads are to blame 
in the matter or not. I have often doubted it. Take 
a center like San Francisco, where five or six great 
railroads concentrate, and if one railroad company 


says: ‘We will do away with this discrimination,’ 


then the chamber of commerce, representing the 
business interests of San Francisco, says to the other 
railroad companies, ‘We will give you all our 
business.’ 

“T presume competition between the railroad 
companies in these great centers has compelled 
them to listen to the selfishness of business men of 
those communities. I am not condemning these 
men or bodies, but I am condemning the conditions 
that permitted such great wrong to be done a com- 
munity and permanent injury to our whole country 
through the misuse of public utilities. 

“When there was a hearing with regard to the 
increased rate to Pacific port points, and when the 
Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco fought 
that raise, one of the attorneys for the railroad 
companies said, ‘Yes; we have built up San Fran- 
cisco by discrimination against interior points, and 
if you are going to oppose fair rates to San Fran- 
cisco we will build up our interior country, which 


: 
‘ 
' 


The Answer of Codperation 201 


is not in competition with water rates.’ —They have 
always had the power to build up the interior coun- 
try. The interior country needed no assistance. 
All that was needed was to throw down the artificial 

barriers to trade and it would seek its proper point 
of operation. Under private ownership it never 
could be accomplished, because the law of competi- 
tion, the law of self-aggrandizement, the ambition 
for personal profit of the railroad companies, 
always stood in the way of carrying out the higher 
idea in building up the roads of this country.” 


Whatever we may think of the technical aptness 
or futility of the devices sometimes suggested, the 
west has had a correct instinct of freedom in the 
jealousy and alarm it has shown over the progress 
of government by large corporations. In this sense 
the impulse behind the recent codperative move- 
ment is political, but it is political only in the mean- 
ing in which we have seen small business and coop- 
eration in Russia striving for their existence. Of 
the men who led in the deliberations of the Farmer- 
Labor conference at Chicago, in February of this 
year, one was the head of a farmers’ union that did a 
business in 1919 of $85,000,000, and the other was 
the Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomo-> 
tive Engineers; both were concerned with the prob- 
lem of building up forces to offset those that have 
acquired more control than is consistent with a free 
national life. The meeting approved the general 


202 The Advancing Hour 


Rochdale idea. It held that finance is the most 
important next step. As it was put by Mr. Stone, 
head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 
the railroad brotherhoods alone now have on de- 
posit in private banks forty-two million dollars, “the 
interest of which is being used to fight the groups 
who deposited the money.” Such words sink deep. 
Later steps, it is hoped, will mean the elimination 
of useless middlemen, unnecessary capital, needless 
advertising, commissions, and other superfluous ex- 
penses. One plan that was emphasized was for co- 
operatively owned daily newspapers. A number of 
such newspapers, ably conducted, might do much 
to modify our civilization. ‘They would be able 
to discuss some fundamental needs with a freedom 
seldom indulged in by the journals of private profit. 

Of what has been accomplished so far in fac- 
tories and knitting mills by the section hands, 
through their Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way 
Men, this account was given: 


“Our 387,000 members are section hands, track- 
men, bridge workers. Their work is chiefly out of 
doors. They need clothes. We have cut their cloth- 
ing cost 40 per cent by manufacturing and through 
buying from big manufacturers who give us 40 per 
cent discount rather than see us go into the same 
business. We have mills in Ypsilanti, Kalamazoo 
and Toledo, making gloves, socks, sweaters, under- 
wear. A shirt factory will be opened soon in Wil- 


at 


The Answer of Codperation 203 


liamston, Mich. Our gloves are of the cheapest cot- 
ton or the best Australian wool, running from 17 
cents to $5.00 in price. One mill turns out 200 
union suits a day. A surplus of 100,000 dozen 
mittens is to be turned over to farmers’ codperatives. 
A branch supply store is to be opened in Chicago 
for our 40,000 members there to buy clothes in. We 
can pay duty and transportation on our goods into 
Canada and then undersell the retailers. Yarn is 
one of our troubles. We are buying yarn from 
profiteers. What we want next is to connect with 
organizations of farmers who raise wool and will 
sell direct to us. Our mills are run the same as a 
capitalist would run them, only they are organized. 
With 100,000 of our members earning less than 
$3.00 a day and many thousands of them earning 
only $2.24 a day, we are interested in cutting the 
price of hosiery from 75 cents a pair to 25 cents 
as we have done. We are interested in going to 
overall manufacturers and buying large lots at 40 
per cent discount. Our 387,000 members are 85 per 
cent American born or naturalized citizens. Yet 
I have been in many a home where the mother and 
children didn’t have shoes on their feet.” 


The North Dakota experiment in cooperation, 
ending in State control, has had obviously the effect 
to be expected. The scare articles in our conserva- 
tive newspapers, explaining how the control of the 
state by the Non-Partisan League has taken from 
the people of that state (I quote from an article in 
the New York Times) “their money, their news- 
papers, their banks, their constitution, and the con- 


204 The Advancing Hour 


trol of their schools,” have not stopped the spread 
of the example. Naturally you cannot put these 
things in the control of one element in society with- 
out taking it out of the control of another element. 
Nobody, as far as I know, denies that the farmers 
of North Dakota proceeded by constitutional meth- 
ods to get possession of the state, and few persons 
who are detached and informed deny that they have 
run the state with such success in some important 
ways that their work can never be replaced by the 
old system. There will be modifications, of course, 
but something has happened that will not be for- 
gotten. Simple farmers have shown that matters 
that are to them of great moment, such as the con- 
trol of grain elevators—a necessity of their lives— 
with the accompanying control of the disposal of 
their crops, can be handled by them much more 
satisfactorily (to them) than they were handled by 
their betters. If the steps they have taken to pro- 
tect themselves from the power of the beef trust are 
followed up and prove ultimately successful, as 
seems likely, one of the predominant evils of our — 
time will have been solved not by the central gov- 
ernment but by the people in one locality under- 
taking to do their own business, and blazing the 
trail for people in other localities. 

The big political question in the American co- 
operative movement is whether farmers and labor 


The Answer of Codperation 205 


organizations will be able to work together. Both 
are in a wholesome, experimenting frame of mind, 
little influenced by extreme philosophy. Robert 
Bruere reports that in three full days of discussion 
at Chicago the word socialism was not heard once, 
and there was as little confidence in government ac- 
tion as there was in Marxian generalizations. 
What they meant to do was to take the next step 
themselves, and then the next, and then the next. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE ANSWER OF LIBERALISM 


“The best protection for the present system is to 


improve it.” 
David Lloyd George. 


“Men are never so likely to settle a question 
rightly as when they discuss it freely.” 
Macaulay. 


“He that will not apply new remedies must ex- 
pect new evils; for time 1s the greatest innovator. 
And if time, of course, alters things to the worse, 
and wisdom and council shall not alter them to the 
better, what shall be the end?” 

Bacon. 


AS liberalism an answer to socialism and to 

the evils connected with modern capital- 

ism? In possibility it has the best of all 

answers. The doubt is whether it has the sincerity 

to make its answer effective. If it has the sincerity 
it will develop the brains. | 

Liberalism is a spirit that changes its form ac- 

cording to the civilization to which it is applied. It 

is the spirit that recognizes growth as inseparable 


from life but recognizes also that if change is to be 
206 


The Answer of Liberalism 207 


growth it must be based carefully on our experience, 
What most often stops an avowed liberal from be- 
ing a real liberal is some sort of self-seeking fear. 
One thing that anybody must do in order to be 
truly liberal is to welcome all possible light from 
fact and thought, and then to make decisions about 
the world’s good without impediment from calcu- 
lations about his own immediate, worldly prosper- 
ity. Some of the British Tories have much to say 
for themselves in claiming that they are capable of 
more courageous disinterestedness, once the case is 
proved, than is a large commercial element in the 
Liberal party. 

I have said enough about the answer of liberalism 
to the problem of international relations. As it 
confronts an American at the present time, it comes 
down to tolerance, close relations, and mutual re- 
sponsibility between the nations, without the desire 
to exploit or to force one conception of civilization. 
‘The acid test of to-day is Russia, and the acid test 
of to-morrow threatens to be Mexico. 

On the other great question, or group of ques- 
tions, the relations between capital, labor, and the 
community, I want to be somewhat more specific 
than I have been on a number of points. I would 
restate the test of liberalism in another form: it 
must accept the possibility and the moral necessity 
of abolishing altogether the proletariat. It must 

' 


208 The Advancing Hour 


thus cut the ground from under socialism, by re- 
moving poverty and fear, without seeking the rem- 
edy in a large, dull, and oppressive central bureau- 
cracy. The stability of business and society to-day 
is threatened by the proletariat. The only remedy 
is to abolish the proletariat. ‘The proletariat is the 
mass with no stake in the community. Having no 
stake, it cares little about upsets. As it has neither 
experience nor stake, changes made by it in the 
structure of society would be rough and ignorant. 
One of the most important immediate steps 
toward abolishing the proletariat could readily be 
taken if we had the will; from the point of view 
of present discontent it may be the most important 
of all. If our standards were higher, continuity of 
employment could easily be brought about. You 
do not find large numbers of salaried men anxious 
to upset existing civilization. That is because they 
are employed by the year. Labor should feel as 
secure in the regularity of its employment as the 
majority of salaried men do. This change would 
give to the laboring man a stake in the community, 
but it would do other things. It would also tre- 
mendously increase production. If a man works 
200 days in a year now, how much more would he 
produce if he worked 300 days? It would be more 
than a so per cent gain, because the man’s whole 
morals would be improved. Nothing deteriorates 


q 
d 
d 
, 


The Answer of Liberalism 209 


a man more than insecurity and sporadic idleness. 
Moreover, if it is recognized that a man must work, 
the mind of the community will be busy inventing 
ways in which he can work productively, and that 
inventiveness would increase production in all sorts 
of incalculable ways. This regularity of employ- 
ment and production is being sought now in some 
progressive factories, but the obligation is immedi- 
ately in the big key industries. | 

The world has been accustomed to a sequence 
which may come again any time unless we have a 
program to avoid it; a lessening demand for steel, 
a lessening demand for ore, for pig iron, a shutting 
down of factories and mines. Such a sequence 
should not be allowed. The production of steel to 
be required in the future is not less than in the past. 
We should build our plans on averages, not on ca- 
price and chance. 

What in the world is more stable than pig-iron? 
That we are to need it is absolutely certain. The 
only substance comparing with it in stability is gold, 
and we may question whether in the immediate 
future its value will not be more stable than that 
of gold. Nothing is so easily stored. It is in all 
ways an ideal article on which to: stabilize produc- 
tion. The only need is money to pay for the labor 
of producing it; and the government, or anybody 
else, would be entirely safe in lending money, even 


210 The Advancing Hour 


up to billions, on the security of the pig-iron itself. 
It would not, however, be necessary to store all 


the pig-iron beyond immediate requirements, be- - 


cause a large part of the articles into which pig-iron 
goes are entirely independent of style and occasion. 
They could be stored almost as well as the iron it- 
self. We have a railroad system of 250,000 miles. 
For at least a generation we shall have use for all 
the steel rails that we can reasonably make, and 
these rails are not only indestructible but of secure 
value. There has, moreover, been no appreciable 
change in the form of a freight-car wheel in a gen- 
eration, so that any quantity of these could safely 
be made. The same stability lies in certain kinds 
of cars. Similar tracing of the principle could 
easily be made from every basic metal, as copper, 
zinc, lead, aluminum, ‘The present situation is that 
we have practically no reserves. It is a mere ques- 
tion of money to make the investment—of banking. 
The per piece cost is lowered, obviously, if you can 
give employees and plants occupation every work- 
ing day in the year. 

The panics of the last fifty years have all been 
connected with the production of pig-iron. The 
coal-mines follow, and the coke ovens; the railroads, 
not carrying ore, pig-iron and coke, lessen the de- 
mand for cars and engines. To stop this deadly 
sequence the only requirements are: (1) recogni- 


The Answer of Liberalism 211 


tion that it must be stopped, (2) comprehensive 
thought, and (3) the ability to borrow a certain 
number of billions, partly as an investment, partly 
as working capital. It is clear enough, I fancy, that 
the task is one properly for the national govern- 
ment to begin and it should have been introduced 
as a new gain, had the election of 1918, under our 
obsolete system, not hopelessly divided our govern- 
ment. Had we made this trial with the great ad- 
vantage of a government experiment it should have 
been led by a Director General, a one-man top, with 
an advisory committee. Such a plan should be 
marked out in detail and set going by Congressional 
committees or by separate departmental activities, 
but as things did come out in 1918 we lost the great 
opportunity and I am under no illusions about the 
chances and fully realize the probability of our 
drifting indefinitely and doing nothing. 

The size of the job cannot be denied but the time 
is coming when the government will have to take 
to itself a very big although limited share in the 
stabilizing of life. If the government shall at any 
- time hereafter take the lead in stabilizing employ- 
ment there will have to be an immense number 
of departments. It is a vast effort in engineering. 
Many parts of the machinery were erected dur- 
ing the war. It was a question of transferring 
their use over into peace, or letting them be lost. 


212 The Advancing Hour 


For the first time in American history we had a 
general survey of what we need and what we pos- 
sess. If these boards had been used for definite 
tasks we could have succeeded; the tasks could have 
been thought out definitely. The law of statistics 
is now going through what the law of accounting 
went through. Thirty years ago accounting was an 
archeological inquiry. Now it is contemporary 
and practically a forecast of to-morrow. The gov- 
ernment, if it ever takes this lead, must have the 
same spirit in statistics. For instance: How many 
plants in North Carolina will be idle at a par- 
ticular period? How much copper can be used? 
How much cement? Wheree How many mene 
What kind of mene What teams? The nearest ap- 
proach we have now to such a system is in the re- 
ports of coal production. ‘There should have been 
work in plenty, detailed and patient work, after the 
war for the Bureau of Statistics, the War Trade 
Board, the War Labor Board, the War Industries 
Board, the Federal Trade Commission, the Geo- 
logical Survey, the Road-making Bureau, and many 
other existing bodies, all capable of feeding central- 
ized reconstruction plans. 

The government did not lead, however, and I do 
not see how after the election of November, 1918, 
it could have done so. If, as seems almost certain, 
we are to lose the value of all the experience we 


The Answer of Liberalism 213 


had in the war, in stabilizing employment and pro- 
duction, this pessimism need not be applied to every 
governmental experience: for example, insurance. 
Nothing makes a man more properly conservative 
than insurance for himself and his family. From 
the time the war began up to Feb. 1, 1920, almost 
4% million Americans were insured, for an aver- 
age of slightly over $9,000, and this almost 40 billion 
dollars of insurance was voluntary, contributive, not 
compulsory and not free. In 1g16 all the old-line 
or legal reserve companies, all the fraternals, all the 
industrials, and all the assessment companies, com- 
bined, wrote less than $5,230,000,000. The expense 
of doing business for the War Risk Insurance Bu- 
reau fell below 5 per cent. the first year and still 
lower thereafter. Moreover, only one-third of this 
expense, or less than 2 per cent., is chargeable to 
insurance, the rest going to allowance, allotment 
and other departments. For a private company 15 
per cent. is considered economical. How much 
would this government step alone, if it had been 
possible to make it permanent, and to extend it to 
other government employees, have done to keep 
the masses interested in stability? The govern- 
ment could have easily extended this system at once 
from soldiers and sailors to the whole realm of gov- 
ernment employees. When everybody becomes a 
creditor of the government, you have an end of 


214 The ‘Advancing Hour 


your subversive mobs. If the government leads, 
the states, cities, big concerns, small concerns, fol- 
low. In this matter of insurance the government 
has done as much as it could do; since demobiliza- 


tion at the end of February, 1920, about 1/5 of the. 


soldiers, or 900,000, have kept their insurance. In 
February, 1920, the amount was $7,500,000,000, or 
1814% of the net total. 

I am not afraid of being scolded for expecting 
much of government leadership sometime. In Ro- 
sario, the second largest city of Argentina, the 
industry of supplying drains is still conducted by a 
private company for profit, and no doubt the stand- 
patters of that Republic would view with alarm any 
suggestion that it be socialized. The furnishing of 
water by cities in our country was alarming a short 
time ago. Lighting the streets and distributing let- 


ters’ by public enterprise has been respectable ~ 


longer. J am accustomed to paying toll when I 


cross a certain bridge between New Hampshire and ° 


Vermont, but on many other rivers private enter- 
prise is safely superseded. How many turn-pike 
roads are left? Are schools, run by the community, 
deadly to private initiative? Are free libraries, 
concerts, lectures, museums? I do not care enor- 
mously just when it happens, but I find it difficult 
to believe that adding transportation and mines to 
the list will involve civilization in darkness. Only 


a, a es 


ee 


The Answer of Liberalism 215 


when the government is in control of some of the 
great key industries can it lead in such ideas as I 
am sketching in this chapter. On whether capital 
takes the lead in the meantime will depend the 
speed and strength of the demand for government 
ownership. Mr. Hoover is surely right in saying 
that in this field of industry it is private capital’s 
last chance. 

Does any serious person doubt the importance of 
these things? Is it not clear that nobody who has a 
secure feeling about himself and his family, and a 
sense of the value of life, is likely to become a reck- 
less agitator. Once we were content to treat yellow 
fever as a natural scourge of God, but after a while 
we went after the mosquito. So with typhoid, Black 
Death, infant mortality and famine. For men to 
average more than one-third of their days in invol- 
untary idleness, as they do in some trades, is one of 
the scourges. In our best periods, we have about 
one and one-half million unemployed, due entirely 
to our evil system of distribution. The result of so 
scandalous a condition is to demoralize the com- 
munity both in morale and efficiency. The man of 
uncertain life deteriorates. He becomes hostile and 
dangerous. Moreover, if democracy is to succeed, 
production must increase. We can level up only 
through increased production. We are not pro- 
ducing intelligently when men are idle over one 


216 The Advancing Hour 


hundred days in a year and it is ostrich-like to 
charge our lack of adequate production to the faults 
of labor only. If progress in steadiness of employ- 
ment, steadiness of production, and in insurance had 
been gained by the war, we should have gained 
much. If we could spend twenty-four billion on 
current expenses in one year of war, we could have 
spent say six billion as a capital investment to get 
started after the war. What we did not have to 
spend were the will and the brains. I like to be- 
lieve that if the election of November, 1918, had 
gone differently, Mr. Wilson and Mr. McAdoo 
might have tried the great experiment. 

Another step, and one that has a critical bearing 
on the moral condition of labor, will grow steadily 
among enlightened private employers. It is to give 
to the workers a share in the management. ‘The 
Whitley Councils in England have government par- 
ticipation and initiative, and we are feeling our way: 
in that direction. In brief the Whitley system gives 
to workmen a share in the management, and ar- 
ranges for grievances to be handled as soon as they 
arise, instead of waiting until they become acute. 
In this country the I. W. W. is strong where capi- 
talism is savage. Bitterness in labor diminishes 
where generosity and kindness are found in capital. 
The way to deal with criticism is to make it share 
in the responsibility. A clever political chairman, 


eS ee eee ee ee —— ee 


The ‘Answer of Liberalism 217 


if faced by a proposal offering many difficulties, 
puts the proposer at the head of a commiittee to 
work out and submit a solution. 

The employer who has the best chance to go 
through the complicated times on which we must 
enter is he who shares the problem with his em- 
ployees. If they are on salaries, not wages; if they 
are in charge of those factory problems that most 
immediately affect them; if they sit on committees 
which look at the financial difficulties as a whole; 
and if the advantage resulting to them from success 
is in fair proportion to the advantage resulting to 
capital: in such a case the barbarous hostility be- 
tween the two forces in production does not flour- 
ish. I have had various friends and acquaintances 
engaged in passing along a share of power to em- 
ployees, and I have never known one to be dis- 
appointed in the results. Many a man has told me 
stories of the ingratitude and unreason of employees, 
but he has ever been the man who was trying to see 
how little he could grant, not how much. There is 
no peace for the employer who looks upon justice 
as a concession, a gift to his protégés. Lord Bounti- 
ful has no salvation for us now. What we seek is 
not a master who behaves well as master; we seek a 
man who looks upon his power as a trust, to which 
is attached the responsibility for doing his bit 


218 The Advancing Hour 


toward the skilful introduction of industrial democ- 
racy. 

The steady, careful but rapid progress toward co- 
partnership between capital and labor cannot be 
made by men who think they have been made by 
heaven the exclusive depositories of wisdom. There 
is a certain manufacturer of automobiles in this 
country who has deserved extremely well of the 
world. He has made farm life more satisfactory. 
He has potentially lowered the cost of distribution. 
He has known how to standardize successfully, to 
keep essentials, to reject all else, and not to be di- 
verted from his original great idea. Also he has 
proved that high wages can be made the most profit- 
able system for the manufacturer. Yet there is a 
limit to the sociological success achieved by this 
man. He has not created a condition as satisfying 
and as full of social promise as a few other em- 
ployers. Why note It is because he has too in- 
dividualistic a conception of responsibility. He has 
too naive an idea of his own competence to decide 
moral questions. His managers keep close track of 
how the money of the employees is spent, and on 
the record is based the decision as to whether extra 
payments shall be made to any employee. Imagine 
one grown-up man thinking he can decide for an- 
other grown-up man (for thousands of grown-up 
men) just what amount it is right that he should 


_— 


Sw ee — eee - 


eS eS eee ee ee ee 


a 


The Answer of Liberalism 219 


spend on moving pictures. It is a far step ahead of 
fifteen years ago, when employers used to tell me 
that higher wages and shorter hours would merely 
be spent in drink, and that employers’ liability acts 
would result in employees having their legs cut off 
on purpose; a far step ahead, but yet the same re- 
fusal to see the employee as a fellow-man, mature 
like the employer, with virtues like him, with his 
own responsibilities for the conduct of his own 
existence. 

The principle is general, but the actual work 

must be concrete, patient and detailed. Admitting 
the moral, political and economic law, we have to 
go ahead and give our lives to its fulfilment. That 
is where the business men come in. In the past 
those business men won glory who hurried the in- 
evitable course of material development across the 
western plains. In the immediate future those who 
do most for the world will be those also who do 
most for the stability and permanent success of their 
own concerns, by removing disruptive tendencies, 
and by creating enthusiastic team-play. There is no 
class in the country that is, on the whole, more rea- 
sonable than labor. ‘There are exceptions, not only 
in desperate groups, like part of the I. W. W., but 
in some of the skilled trades also, where frequent 
unfair demands and needless strikes keep the situa- 
tion upset, but the wider one’s experience with 


220 The Advancing Hour 


labor the more he will say, if he is open to ideas, 
that the mass of labor surprises by its broad-minded- 
ness rather than by impatience or narrowness. 

Obviously labor cannot in the long run expect to 
get the same results for itself when production is 
slow as when it is ample, but why should we expect 
labor to take a broader view until it has won the 
affirmative rights and benefits of partnership? 
Moreover, it believes (what is true) that irregu- 
larity of employment and of production is the result 
of stupidity and would not occur if we had the 
economic system we ought to have. If there were a 
real partnership the intense interest of labor in regu- 
larity of employment would result in constant seri- 
ous attention being given to this problem, the base 
of all others. 

To increase the efficiency of labor is a matter of 
infinite study and good will. As examples a few of 
the steps that we should all be studying may be 
roughly indicated thus: 

(a) Stop the labor turn-over. It gives a double 
loss. There is a loss in transit and a heavy loss in 
efficiency. Labor cannot be kept stationary by 
force, except in crises, but it should be kept station- 
ary by uniformity of employment, by pecuniary 
interest in the business, by pleasant conditions of 
living. 

(b) Is really a corollary to (a), but deserves sep- 


The ‘Answer of Liberalism 221 


arate emphasis. Seasonal work must be as far as 
possible abolished. In the principal industries it 
can readily be done. In the others it must be sup- 
plemented by work to be done in the same neighbor- 
hood at other seasons; some of which must be organ- 
ized intentionally by the city, state or government, 
or by great cooperative institutions. 

(c) Scientific management must be used inten- 
sively, and the opposition to it of both labor and 
capital must be overcome. Frederick W. Taylor, 
the father of efficiency study, who died a few years 
ago, calculated that a first-class workman can under 
proper conditions, without cost to health or strength, 
produce from two to four times what he actually 
does produce. ‘Taylor lacked certain human con- 
ceptions, but his genius focussed an idea that will 
play a great part in constructing a new world. 

Since in politics we have learned, or had learned 
before this war, that responsibility makes for con- 
servatism, why are we so reluctant to test the same 
principle in industry? When kings and barons 
had to admit the masses to political decisions the 
masses did not become dangerously radical. The 
only dangerous radicalism on a large scale is vio- 
lent reaction from a war brought on, cheered on, 
pressed to its furthest limit by the too powerful few, 
and followed by a peace controlled by the same ele- 
ments. There is no principle safer than this one: 


222 The Advancing Hour 


that a reasonable share in power and responsibility 
makes for rational conservatism; that too large a 
concentration of power makes for blindness in those 
who wield it. The principle is as true in industry 
as in earlier branches of politics. If the principle 
is conceded, why not have the courage to follow it, 
not merely academically, in discussing what has 
been, but, like statesmen, in navigating the safest 
course toward what is to be? How many of us are 
at heart like a certain old gentleman, whose char- 
acter was thus described to me by one who knew 
him better than I did: ‘He was truly a remark- 
able man. Respectability, with its accompanying 
conspiracy to ignore what is unpleasant, dominated 
his entire life. Beneath appearances, beneath con- 
ventionality and all the illusions upon which it 
rested, and destined in the final conflict to triumph 
over them all, lay his unconquerable clannishness, 
the sole sense of reality with any hope of surviving 
him. But even this was not his truest and deepest 
self. Underneath clannishness, social conventions, 
respectability, everything, and inaccessible to all 
appeals, was the sense of power, due solely to wealth, 
a power which his indomitable will held fast to 
the end.” 

I believe the best hope for ushering in industrial 
democracy with skill lies in increasing realization 
by American business men of the problem of a 


The ‘Answer of Liberalism 223 


new distribution of power. The foremost role 
can scarcely be taken by anybody except our 
business men. The slogan of the experts since 
the war has been, “The volume of production is 
everything.” The reply of labor, expressed with 
less forensic training and deprived of any powerful 
press, is that the volume of production is not every- 
thing; that production to-day runs largely to use- 
less and even harmful luxuries, expensively adver- 
tised ; that both production and distribution are car- 
ried on irregularly, wastefully; that new ideals of 
life and new distributions of power are worth suf- 
fering for. To bring about smoothly constructive 
changes in production, distribution, and power, 1s 
the problem of all problems. We are in for the 
great adventure; the only issue is whether we are 
to be led by knowledge or by stumbling inexperi- 
ence. 

What are the business questions about which men 
in the highest positions of power, whether political 
or business, should be specially equipped? ‘They 
include the relations between different countries. 
Huge economic relations between different coun- 
tries must be worked out. At home we must find 
answers to such evils as involuntary unemployment, 
insecurity of employment, insecurity of old age, 
production of the needed things, idleness of plants 
as well as of men, crushing of individual effort and 


224 The Advancing Hour 


variety by big units, use of railway rates to favor 
growth of trusts and of big cities, inefficiency of 
overgrowth, prevention of labor from sharing the 
knowledge and the responsibility of the business in 
which it is employed. 

Some of my radical friends distrust the enlight- 
ened but cautious business man, in:whom I put a 
special hope. The powerful engineering mind was 
in its element in the recent struggle. It will not be 
less in its element in the longer after-struggle, 
wherever it is found in a man who can welcome the 
broad sharing of power, which is often the most dif- 
ficult thing for a very efficient man to do. I can 
easily realize why not every thinker who reflects as 
rebelliously as I do on our present society has the 
same respect for organizing force that I have. A 
radical friend of mine often tells the story of a man 
who walked down Fifth Avenue. with the devil. 
This man, at one point, reached up and took a 
piece of truth out of the air. The devil paid no 
attention. “Does it not worry you,” the man asked, 
“to have me get hold of a piece of pure truth?” 
“Not a bit,” the devil said, “for as soon as a man 
finds a piece of truth he organizes it, and’then it is 
truth no more.” 

I could match this with a favorite story of my 
own from the Chinese. A man, by speaking certain 
magic words, made a stick draw the water from his 


ee Se ee re ee ee ee 


The Answer of Liberalism 225 


well, which formerly he had drawn by hand. Later 
he found that by breaking the stick into parts, and 
speaking the words over both parts, he could make 
each part do as much as the whole stick had done. 
Before the end of his experiments he had a multi- 
tude of pieces working for him, drawing the water 
for all the village. It happened, however, that the 
man at one point forgot the words by which the 
sticks were controlled. He no longer was able to 
tell them to stop. The whole village was flooded 
and all the inhabitants were drowned. The Chinese 
tell it as a parable of modern industry. 

Although I have much sympathy with this fear 
of our age of machinery, nevertheless I said to my 
friend: “Your story is against yourself, because 
organization is a good, though it is abused. Be- 
cause of steam, large scale production, public educa- 
tion, increasing population, there is more happiness, 
more light in the masses than there ever was before. 
Thirty million people might live in Germany if she 
had the organization of 1840. To support 70,000,- 
ooo with higher material comfort, organization is a 
necessity.” 

Then I told him about Thomas Hardy’s dog. He 
was a young sheep dog, notably logical for a dog. 
Usually he worked under the control of an older 
and more conservative canine, but once he found 
himself all alone with the sheep before him. He 


226 The Advancing Hour 


had formulated the premise that chasing sheep was 


a good thing. He chased them. He chased them 
until they fell over a precipice and were all killed. 
The same day the young dog was shot. ‘Another 
instance,” says Hardy, “‘of the untoward fate which 
often attends dogs and other philosophers who fol- 
low out a train of reasoning to its logical conclu- 
sion, and attempt a perfectly consistent conduct in a 
world made up so largely of compromise.” 

Modern organizing ability and large-scale pro- 
ductiveness are essential facts in any world-outlook 
to-day. It is true, however, that they are not the 
qualities in which we have been falling short. They 
are essential but they are not enough, as the past 
six years abundantly show. Executive and admin- 
istrative ability is not frequently combined with 
cunning and inhumanity. Happily it is frequently 
combined with generosity, power of growth, and 
many-sidedness. ‘The future largely depends on 
such men. If they side with reaction, the industrial 
revolution will come nevertheless, but violent and 
destructive. If they take the lead in sanity, seeking 
a great construction, we may gain smoothly a world 
in which not only the average but also the favored 
people are happier than before. 

To our business men we might put the situation 
in some such way as this:—no period is truly great 
unless it has great ideals, a spirit of its own high 


Se ee ee ee ee eee 


a ee ee ae a ee 


ee 


a 
4 
‘ 
4 
4 


The Answer of Liberalism 227 


enterprise. A time is never made interesting by 
timidity and unbelief. Greatness to-day and to- 
morrow must lie in creating a world where con- 
stantly increasing production is made possible by 
constantly increasing harmony. As a basis for this 
harmonious energy there must be in every unit, in 
every factory, its share of responsibility and of hope. 
No country in the world equals the United States 
in natural advantages for taking the lead in such a 
re-creation. What percentage of our business men 
have the heart and the imagination to meet the need 
of our day? How much is there in them of crea- 
tive faculty, of true originality? Strong natures 
respond to big needs. We are at the entrance to 
one of the worst periods of modern history, or one 
of the best. A few thousand business men in 
America can determine which path our country is 
to take. 

In perfect honesty to ourselves I think it is neces- 
sary to say that another great class, the lawyers, are 
less promising than the business men. Many of the 
best thinkers are lawyers, but on the whole the bench 
is reactionary. The realization of this has long 
been vivid in leaders like Col. Roosevelt and Mr. 
Bryan, but they have not found the remedy. What 
I believe to be the basic attitude of the leader of 
liberalism to-day, Mr. Wilson, is illustrated in the 
famous Brandeis case, and I think a clear statement 


228 The Advancing Hour 


of that case will put the matter more effectively 
than much generalization. 

The Supreme Court stands like a stone wall in 
defense of those conceptions of property that are 
essentially retentive in their nature, and it interprets 
those conceptions with all the strictness of fear. 
The appointment of Mr. Brandeis was followed by 
the appointment of another liberal judge, but we 
have no guarantee of the next step. I am not among 
those who believe that if there were another vacancy 
during Mr. Wilson’s term he might appoint some- 
body of the turn of mind of Mr. Palmer, for ex- 
ample. He appointed Justice McReynolds, to be 
sure, but his mind has focussed much more sharply 
on the problem since then. What is much more 
probable is that succeeding reactionary Presidents 
will prevent the court from becoming a true expres- 
sion of our times. Mr. Brandeis has often said that 
the trouble lay not in the constitution of the United 
States, but in its interpretation. ‘The men who drew 
that instrument were great men, but they could not 
count on being succeeded by an era, in times to 
come, when we were to hang to the letter and thus 
lose the spirit. ‘The men who made the constitu- 
tion thought for themselves. Many of our rulers 
to-day expect their ancestors not only to do their 
general thinking for them, but also to make the 
specific application. 


ee ee ee ee ee 


ss | ee ee 


The Answer of Liberalism 229 


That the President sees all these truths as vividly 
as anybody is, I think, without any doubt. When 
he asked one of his advisers his opinion of the wis- 
dom of putting Mr. Brandeis on the court his ad- 
viser was startled. “He is the greatest lawyer in the 
United States,’ was the reply, “and it will be a 
splendid appointment, but I hope you realize what 
a storm will be created when it is announced.” The 
President smiled, “Let us see,” he said, “I go west 
on Friday. I will send in the appointment on 
Thursday.” 

A storm it certainly did create. ‘The Senate 
wrangled over the question of confirmation for 
months. It viewed with alarm. It had a special 
committee run down all the cock-and-bull stories 
that could be found. It was supported ardently by 
that prominent element in the bar that is parasitic 
to big business. It was ardently supported by Fifth 
Avenue, Wall Street, Newport, and State Street. 
We can blush with shame, we can despond, or we 
can smile with irony, according to our make-up, 
when we remember that among the leaders in this 
violent defense of the Supreme Court as a citadel 
of privilege were a large percentage of the men 
who are supposed to stand at the very top of our bar: 
also a large percentage of the Republican Senators 
who more specifically represent entrenched privi- 
lege. ‘The Democratic Senators who represent en- 


230 The Advancing Hour 


trenched privilege would have been just as strong 
in opposition, had it not been for Mr. Wilson’s 
whip. Indeed, without that whip, cracked over a 
then frightened majority, the Senate would never 
have permitted such a threat to the serenity of exist- 
ing wrongs. 

The issue represented by this appointment was 
illustrated in the remark made to me a number of 
years ago by a man who was then a brilliant and 
successful young reformer. I had spoken of how 
useful Mr. Brandeis could be in such a position as 
Secretary of Commerce, but my friend replied: 
‘No, those administrative positions do not amount 
to anything. The place for such a man is on the 
Supreme Court of the United States. That is where 
progress is permitted or blocked.” When the possi- 
bility actually did come in sight, that Mr. Brandeis 
might be put on the court, I talked over the idea 


with the most distinguished woman reformer in the _ 


country. Again the question came up of the rela- 
tive importance of different positions. ‘The court 
is the place where a man of that quality can do the 
most,” she said. “Think what it would mean to 
everybody who is actually working at the under- 
lying problems anywhere. Modern steps are con- 
stantly stopped by the Supreme Court of the United 
States. In the individual states the state courts up- 
set the work of the state legislatures and these state 


oe ee 


a ie 


et Be ed es Pe ees i tin 


The Answer of Liberalism 231 


courts are controlled in their turn by the nine men 
in Washington. Every social worker in the land 
would draw a breath of hope if Mr. Brandeis were 
to go on the Supreme Court, and there would be no 
spot in the country that would not be affected.” 

Let us sum up, then, what for young Americans 
of to-day are tests of whether a mind belongs in the 
advanced liberal group, as opposed both to the 
standpatters and the doctrinaire socialists: 

(1) The complete abolition of private capital is 
a mere doctrine, questionable even as ideal, and 
harmful if an immediate purpose. Remote evolu- 
tion will be taken care of by our descendants. 

(2) The duties to be imposed on the central gov- 
ernment must be carefully studied. ‘To impose some 
duties is as mistaken as not to impose others, but it 
might do much for leadership and for stability. 

(3) The conception that production is to be car- 
ried on in such ways as to produce the largest divi- 
dends on the so-called “investment” is wasteful and 
cruel. he most important part of the investment 
is the lives of the laborers. If an enterprise pays 
20% and the men are involuntarily idle 100 days 
in the year, the enterprise is actually run at a heavy 
loss to the community. Regularity of employment 
is a necessity and a right. 

(4) The abuses of the present industrial system 
are such as will not be endured by labor much 


282 The ‘Advancing Hour 


longer. Standpat victories against this principle 
are temporary, and mean trouble soon. 

(5) That labor should not be represented in 
management at least equally with capital is an 
anachronism. pete, 

(6) The degree of control exercised by capital 
will vary according to the nature of the business. 
Likewise will vary the degree of control exercised 
by labor and the degree exercised by the state. The 
purpose should be to allow as much control by the 
labor engaged as is possible; enough return to capi- 
tal to offer a fair inducement to saving; and only 
such control by the national government as the con- 
sumer’s interests require. 

(7) We must seek healthy modes of growth 
away from the present excessive private capitalism 
by various kinds of codperation, notably the co- 
operative movement proper, which is showing more 
vitality than any other offset to private capitalism. 
The relation of these movements to national control 
must be worked out by ardent brains afd by experi- 
ence. 

(8) The most important of all things in a democ- 
racy is education. Among the ruling powers busi- 
ness stands first. In America to-day it contains 
much reaction, but also the seeds of rapid and use- 
ful growth. The most reactionary great force in the 


The Answer of Liberalism 233 


country is the lawyers. The most rapid single prac- 
ticable step forward would be to appoint to the 
Supreme Court three men who understand the 
nature of liberty and the facts of modern life. 


CHAPTER X 
FROM WILSON TO THE FUTURE 


“T learned a great deal about Mexico by listening 
to a sufficiently large number of lies.” 


Woodrow Wilson. 


“For ten years Wilson had taught revolution, 
revolution after peaceful methods. Constitutions, 
laws, and social habits which everywhere upheld 
the unprecedented inequalities in modern society 
created by the industrial revolution of the last cen- 
tury he would amend, repeal, or ameliorate. Even 
governments he had attacked on his tours through 
England and Italy. It was a day of the self-deter- 
mination of peoples and a new-old struggle for 
democracy. Asa result of this constant preaching 
he had been elevated to the governorshtp of a state, 
then to the presidency of the United States, and now 
he stood in Parts, confronted by the ancient enemy. 
of all revolution, of democracy. His own country 
was officially against him, its articulate elements 
had~grown tired of his reforms, greater reforms 
than any other leader of the United States had ever 
effected, and had learned how to thwart him.” 

Professor William E. Dodd, 
Chicago University. 


Washington’s responsibility 1s greater than any 
other's, for through its hidebound conservatism, its 
234 


From Wilson to the Future 235 


incredible timidity and its loathsome partisanship, 
all the perils unforeseen at the time of the armistice 
have been made possible. If the United States Sen- 
ate could have been persuaded to forego its small- 
souled opposition to the League of Nations, that 
organization would have been powerfully in exist- 
ence long ago. It was intended to restrain the arro- 
gant and the vengeful, it was designed to restore 
and guarantee peace, it was specially charged with 
just and benevolent revisions of the treaty, and all 
these things, with the United States as a member, it 
would have done. 

“The treaty has failed and the League has failed 
because we have shirked our duty, and we have 
shirked our duty because Henry Cabot Lodge has 
found 1n the bedevilment of the covenant an op por- 
tunity to gratify the meanest and most misused per- 
sonal animosity that ever figured in great affairs. 
If he and his followers would see what they have 
done by delaying peace and reconstruction, let them 
look at Europe, seething with revolution, suff ering 
from hunger and disease, bankrupt, idle and threat- 
ened on one side by anarchy and on the other by 
resurrected or pinchbeck dynasties.” 


The New York World. 


O look ahead at the spirit of our time can 
N leave out of account the seeds that Wood- 
row Wilson has sown. ‘That his gigantic 
addition to the store of liberal intention and con- 
fidence in the world was diminished in 1918, 1919, 


and 1920 by qualities in him, and still more by 
qualities in his countrymen, is a tragedy that I have 


236 The Advancing Hour 


no wish to gloss over. Such an amazing statement 
as that of Mr. Keynes, that the President’s mind is 
slow, can be passed by with a shrug by those fa- 
miliar with the brilliant speed of Mr. Wilson’s 
apprehension. Also we can safely dismiss all the 
current jargon about his being academic, and being 
satisfied to enunciate a principle, careless of its 
working out. How can anybody emit that judg- 
ment with the history of the Federal Reserve sys- 
tem, probably the most constructive piece of legis- 
lation since the Civil War, fresh in our minds? 
How could any one say it who remembered the con- 
centrated work Mr. Wilson did on the tariff? Back 
in the Princeton days was he satisfied to preach de- 
mocracy, or did he split the college wide open by 
applying it? No, the personal reason of importance 
that is connected with the debacle is the quality 
that makes the President dislike to codperate in 
close personal touch with men of opposite will. 
The best in Wilson and Wilsonism is not dead. 
This best is for us to cherish. The money trust can 
never flourish as it did before 1912. The tariff can 
never again be made in the secret offices of privi- 
lege. But other gifts are not safe without the con- 
tinuing vigilance that spells liberty, the vigilance 
that it behooves liberalism especially to furnish. 
Who can assure us that we are not to be plunged 
into a mean and reactionary war with Mexico? 


Fala, ~ee 


From Wilson to the Future 237 


The propaganda has been long in preparation. 
Part of this propaganda is studied, part is instinc- 
tive. At the time of the Villa raid, it is not an 
exaggeration to say, exactly one man stood between 
us and invasion, and that service of Wilson’s in a 
time of popular brain-storm is never to be forgotten. 

During the campaign of 1916, I wrote the follow- 
ing prediction: 


“Tf some dramatic accident, with Germany or 
Mexico, does not come along to distract attention, 
the voter who has not yet made up his mind will be 
swayed in the end, when he has reflected carefully, 
by a few simple considerations. 

“The country is prosperous. 

“We avoided war with Germany and yet won an 
epoch-making victory for international law; epoch- 
making, that is, if Germany does not return to her 
earlier policy. If she does, it will mean war, and 
the issues will change. 

“We have thus far been able to avoid interfering 
with Mexico’s attempt to realize herself. It has 
been a delicate and difficult maneuver, but up to 
now it has been accomplished. The voter will ask 
himself whether he would have preferred a policy 
based on American investments. Here again, if 
war comes, the issues will change.” 


We did go into the war and the issues did change. 
The Mexican situation and its menace still confront 
us. It is not improbable that we may find our 
policy committed to finding excuses for an invasion 


238 The Advancing Hour 


of Mexico and a domination of that country’s 
finances and resources. In my 1916 article I 
summed up: 


“Beyond these conditions lies one inclusive ques- 
tion. In which of the two great divisions of human 
thought do you belong? Are you Liberal or Tory? 
If you dread the struggle to put ideals into public 
life, if you deem established privilege the safest 
foundation, you should next November vote Re- 
publican.” 


Writing the chapter called “Without a Party” 
I have already indicated that I do not believe that 
either of the big parties can be called liberal in 
itself. During the time of Wilson’s influence, how- 
ever, I have tended to think the Democratic reac- 
tionary elements less subtle and dangerous than the 
Republican reactionary elements. The South is 
wotried by a race-problem, and we often think of 
that situation as inevitably meaning reaction; and 
yet the South followed not only Wilson but Bryan; 
it has been producing men as liberal as Col. House, 
McAdoo, Glass, Houston, Daniels, Alderman; and 
it has shown much less of that money-solidarity that 
is the ruling fact in politics than the northern ruling 
classes have shown. The Democratic machines in 
the northern cities are often black spots, but they 
are mere obstacles. ‘These things are the inertia, 
existing in any party. With that dull mass a strong 


From Wilson to the Future 239 


leader can deal. The bulk of the party is made up 
of the poor, the aspiring. The Republicans have 
been so long in power that to their party have been 
drawn those whose dreams are of material advan- 
tage, not much enlightened by larger purpose. It 
is not only the Garys, Lodges, Penroses, Knoxes. 
It is not even mainly they. It is the young men 
also, who, almost everywhere at the North, have 
entered the party because, at the threshold of life, 
wealth, social glamor, and local power are prom- 
ised only through that gate. After half a century 
of scarcely broken rule, the Republican party has 
an unmistakable dollar bias. It will require 
great leadership, individual or in the mass, to make 
it approach in action the liberalism of the Demo- 
cratic party under Wilson. Had our parties not 
been so meaningless, the liberals of all parties should’ 
have lent their strength to him. It was absurd to 
find liberal men voting merely on party grounds, 
with the entrenched system, against the most pro- 
gressive legislative record of our time, and against 
principles of equality and justice successfully ap- 
plied, even in so turbulent a time, to foreign af- 
fairs; to the great war; to China, Mexico, South 
America. 

Some progressives care less for such heavy as- 
saults on the underlying system of privilege than 
they do for what they call social amelioration. 


240 The Advancing Hour 


They ought to be satisfied with the record in social 
welfare. ‘They have seen the eight-hour law apply- 
ing to work done for the government as well as to 
work done by the government; an eight-hour law 
for female employees in the District of Columbia; 
an eight-hour provision for Post Office clerks and 
carriers; for civilians engaged in the manufacture 
of armaments and powder for the government, and 
in the mining of coal for the navy. The Children’s 
Bureau Law is directed immediately to the welfare 
of children. The Industrial Commission Law was 
passed for investigation into the whole subject of 
industrial relation. ‘The Federal Employment Bu- 
reau represented the best study of a profound need. 
It is fair to say that the greater part of the social 
side of the Bull Moose platform of 1912 was car- 
ried out by the Wilson administration. 
Remembering these things there is more reason 
to blame the American people for the fatal election 
of 1918 than there is to blame the President; incred- 
ibly thoughtless (and in a most literal sense ill- 
advised) as was the partisan form of his appeal for 
a supporting legislature. He is guilty of listening 
to inferior brains. What is the public guilty of? 


Remember the situation. It is freely admitted that - 


Mr. Wilson has a one-track mind. With the con- 
centration implied in that expression he had formu- 
lated and put into statutes the best practicable 


From Wilson to the Future 241 


American standards of financial freedom. Then he 
had held us out of the war while he educated us, 
and educated all Europe, to the desirable objects of 
the upheaval. His speeches and notes had strength- 
ened the Entente immeasurably, by holding in line 
its labor and liberal elements, and it had split the 
German population wide apart. It had in a very 
large sense won the war. He was then in a most 
critical situation, representing the world’s hope of 
a settlement that would mean peace and progress, 
opposed by all the traditional imperialism and fear- 
politics of Europe. When he needed all his power 
for this great struggle we, the voters, were so intel- 
lectually incompetent that we furnished a hostile 
legislature, discrediting the President in his con- 
test with European statesmen, and doing more 
to bring about a bad peace than any one develop- 
ment, unless perhaps it was the discovery by Lloyd 
George in the khaki election that those speeches 
which were most successful with his audiences were 
those in which he made the most extreme promises 
of reparation and punishment. For this extraordi- 
narily silly vote of the American people it is no 
alibi to blame the President for his hasty and un- 
wise request for Democrats, or for his unwilling- 
ness to have Republican leaders among the peace 
delegates, or to have a greater number of strong 
and free personalities. The French have a pro- 


242 The Advancing Hour 


found saying that everybody has the defects of his 
good qualities Occasionally, as in the case of 
George Washington, it is difficult to apply this say- 
ing, but it nearly always holds good, and its applica- 
tion to Mr. Wilson had long been fully realized. 
An intelligent voting public would not have im- 
periled a world-situation to punish the discrepan- 
cies of a great, progressive, and successful leader. 

In truth, the President’s awkward political move 
was not the largest cause of the electoral folly of 
1918. ‘The larger cause was the backwardness of 
the American people in political consciousness. 
Very recently Mr. Hoover has been criticized be- 
cause he saw and said that in that election it would 
be desirable to return a legislature in harmony with 
the executive. So stupid are we! I once asked Mr. 
Root, when he was Secretary of State, how the 
Cabinet stood on a certain course of President 
Roosevelt’s, and he answered that the President’s 
will was so strongly set in the direction indicated 
that it would be merely wasted labor to attempt to 
change it. President Wilson’s character is of the 
kind that assumes all the responsibilities that can 
in any case be interpreted to go with the functions 
he assumes. He does not play safe. He selects 
his goal, often distant and illumined, and goes for 
it. Such a nature creates difficulties for itself, but 
it accomplishes things that other natures do not ac- 


From Wilson to the Future 243 


complish. Did Mr. Wilson lose or win his fight 
at Princeton? ‘There is no yes or no to such ques- 
tions, but I think he won more ground for his cause 
than he would have won if he had been more cau- 
tious and had thereby held his position. As Gov- 
ernor of New Jersey, it is not the exact value of his 
legislation that he will be judged by. That legisla- 
tion was rather a banner, a battle-cry, than a final 
solution, but if he had not thrown it in the faces 
of the Jersey bosses and the Jersey corporations 
he would not have been Woodrow Wilson. When 
the Federal Reserve act was in debate, I reported 
to him an occurrence. A leading Wall Street 
banker had asked me if I thought Mr. Wilson 
would consider suggestions from financial men 
about amendments to the Federal Reserve Bill. At 
that time the financial interests were assuming a 
threatening manner, and I replied: “I do not 
know, but I imagine he would, provided the sug- 
gestions were made as suggestions, not as attempts 
to coerce.” When I told Mr. Wilson this, he an- 
swered: “You did not go far enough. Another 
condition is that their suggestions should be with 
the object of carrying out the fundamental objects 
of this legislation, not of impeding them.” In other 
words, the President meant to go the whole dis- 
tance, and he did, thus putting on the books one of 
the few pieces of legislation that can be called really 


244 The Advancing Hour 


effective in shaking the hold of the central financial 
system on our political and business life. A sim- 
ilar example of his tendency to select a strategic 
point and bend all of his will and intelligence to 
that point was in his policy of winning the confi- 
dence of Latin America and holding it in spite of 
the Mexican war fever. I have already referred in 
general terms to his loneliness in that situation, and 
it would be indiscreet to say explicitly how many 
members even of his own cabinet had an interven- 
tion spasm after the Villa raid, but it may be said 
that not even Lincoln or Washington ever stood his 
ground in more inspired isolation than Wilson did 
in defense of non-interference to the utmost prac- 
ticable extent. In the long run his policy may lose 
or it may win. He has done his part. 

The man I look upon as probably the most ac- 
curate reporter in America came to my apartment, 
one night in 1916, immediately from the White 
House, after two hours’ talk with Mr. Wilson. 
My friend was aglow with appreciation of the talk, 
but especially struck by one remark from that two 
hours. “What impresses me most,” said the Presi- 
dent, “is the immovability of our people, the ex- 
traordinary amount of work that must be expended 
to tempt them forward a single inch.” 

I say that this political conservatism of our peo- 
ple is a dominant cause of the President’s failure to 


From Wilson to the Future 245 


obtain all that he might have obtained at Paris, and 
that it is too little emphasized. It would do us far 
more good to dwell on this national inertness than 
to overdo criticism of Mr. Wilson. If we dwelt on 
it enough it might even lead us soon to change our 
constitution, so that such a situation as that created 
in 1918 could not be brought about and persisted in. 
We need not go as far as the British. If we could 
elect our representatives for four years, and our 
Senators for four, we could usually avoid this folly 
of deadlock, without giving up our habitual division 
of power between the three branches. If Congress 
would merely by resolution invite the cabinet mem- 
bers to appear weekly before Congress and answer 
questions from all members responsible cabinet 
government would develop inevitably. 

Of course, in November, 1918, Americans did not 
go to the polls to vote against the Golden Rule or the 
Sermon on the Mount. They mostly did not know 
what they were voting about, except sometimes in 
local detail. Students of economic psychology, 
however, well know how closely connected is nar- 
rowness in foreign affairs with domestic defense of 
privilege. If there is an excuse for using such 
words as stand-patriot and patrioteer, it is to mod- 
ernize Dr. Johnson’s famous definition of our kind 
of patriotism. I do not suppose a Senator had any 
idea, when he swelled with patriotic hatred of old 


246 The Advancing Hour 


world inferiority, or when he was boiling with fear 
lest the President might succeed in his effort to in- 
duce the Entente to act generously, that he was tak- 
ing the most effective method of sharpening the 
fight between the specially privileged and the needy 
many. More long-sighted believers in privilege, 
indeed, like Lord Milner and Lord Lansdowne, 
have been in practical proposals far more generous, 
because they realize that too free an indulgence in 
patriotic hatred may bring the whole modern in- 
dustrial system to ruin, hitting rich and poor alike. 
But few Conservatives take this larger view. 

There are in America, particularly in the West, 
men who sense these things, whether clearly or 
dimly. Mr. Bryan is such a man, and so is Senator 
LaFollette. When Bryan endeavored in 1900 to 
make public ownership of railroads a national issue 
he had this philosophy in his mind. When he op- 
posed our entering the war his vision included the 
impeding of human progress by the vagaries of 
patriotic madness. 

Facing God, therefore, the President decided. 
He saw much being done that was far away from 
his intentions. I need not go into those things. 
They were painful, discouraging, disillusioning. 
Before he went to Paris there was printed in La 
Victoire a little essay by one of the most distin- 
guished of French publicists. It was a shock to me, 


From Wilson to the Future 247 


for I knew the man and what he stood for in Paris 
opinion. The article proposed two statues to cele- 
brate the victory. One was to be to Foch, with a 
bludgeon as emblem. The other was to be to Wil- 
son, and the emblem was to be a fishing-rod, be- 
cause of the wily treatment of Germany that finally 
induced her to sign the armistice. The worst of it 
was that the man who wrote the article intended his 
interpretation of the President to be genuine praise. 
He wholly failed to understand the best things 
about the President’s thinking,—its distance, its 
honesty, its consistency, and its courage. Most peo- 
ple forget. They are swung by the moment. Mr. 
Wilson persists. He persists and remembers. ‘The 
war to him was part of the settlement, and the settle- 
ment found the principles in his mind just what they 
had been before. No doubt a case to disprove this 
consistency could be made of fragments taken from 
speeches, especially in his last hectic stumping tour, 
but we are looking at essentials. ‘To show that in 
substance he has been consistent we must remember 
that progress is never a straight line. A skipper is 
not inconsistent whose course is affected by wind 
and tide. Were it not so affected he would be no 
skipper. But his very tacks take their direction not 
only from wind, tide, and hidden rocks, but always 
also from the skipper’s knowledge of what his des- 
tination is. Mr. Wilson’s destination has never 


248 The Advancing Hour 


changed. It is strange how difficult it is for most 
people to remember now what the national thought 
was in September, 1914, after the assault on Bel- 
gium, when Col. Roosevelt wrote these words: 


“YJ admire and respect the German people. I am 
proud of the German blood in my veins. When a 
nation feels that the issue of a contest in which, 
from whatever reason, it finds itself engaged will 
be national life or death, it is inevitable that it 
should act so as to save itself from death and per- 
petuate its life. 

“(The Belgians) are suffering somewhat as my 
own German ancestors suffered when ‘Turenne rav- 
aged the ‘Palatinate ... the suffering is by no 
means as great... 3:2. 

“When Russia took part, it may well be argued 
that it was impossible for Germany not to come to 
the defense of Austria, and that disaster would sure- 
ly have attended her arms had she not followed the 
course she actually did follow as regards her op- 
ponents on the western frontier. As to her wonder- 
ful efficiency—her equipment, the foresight and 
decision of her general staff, her instantaneous ac- 
tion, her indomitable persistence—there can be 
nothing but the praise and admiration due a stern, 
virile, and masterful people, a people entitled to ~ 
hearty respect for their patriotism and far-seeing 
self-devotion.” 


Col. Roosevelt also wrote: “It is certainly emi- 
nently desirable that we should remain entirely 
neutral.” The President asked us to keep true to 


From Wilson to the Future 249 


our thought; with what we knew then nothing ex- 
cept neutrality could be just. His prophetic mind, 
all too accurately, conceived ahead the destruction, 
the mixture of good and evil, the seeing red that war 
would mean, and he asked his people to remain a 
sane oasis amid war’s insanity. His object was ever 
to keep war as close to the higher reason as it could 
be kept. When the excitable and well-dressed peo- 
ple and the newspapers were trying to work up a 
stampede over the Lusitania, he was a hundred times 
right to hold back, and (whether referring to Mex- 
ico, the Lusitania, or only to a general truth) to 
proclaim himself too proud to fight. Again in 1916 
he won on the slogan that he had kept us out of 
war, which he had done, and heaven knows he 
hoped he might continue to keep us out, seeking the 
constructive end of an ethical settlement by the exer- 
cise of his moral influence. But by developments 
such a settlement became impossible. ‘Peace with- 
out victory,” an expression chosen with great care 
and held to against protest, represented a far-seeing 
demand of the President, which was rejected by 
both sides; and as we were to enter, it was inevitable 
that we should choose the side against Germany. 
We did enter, taking every precaution to force the 
issue onto grounds that would help give value to 
the peace. Let us not, in our disappointment over 
the outcome at Paris, forget the great fact that 


250 The Advancing Hour 


ethical considerations will not down, and that for 
the prevalence of those considerations the President 
deserves more credit than any other man. If he had 
accomplished no more than the raising of the moral 
issue, all over the world, it could not yet be said 
that he had failed. It would indeed have to be said 
that he had greatly succeeded, for he had moved our 
standards forward. When he is condemned it is 
largely on expectations that he himself has made 
familiar. 

But he has gained more for the world than this 
moral atmosphere. By his sacrifices, as well as by 
his insistences, he has prepared for the peoples of 
the world a safer and a higher method of dealing 
together if they wish to take it. If the free peoples 
of the world will elect to their parliaments men of 
forward vision, true liberals, they will have no diffi- 
culty in using the League of Nations as an instru- 
ment for unceasing progress. Detestable as is much 
of the settlement, and defective as is much of the 
procedure, there is nevertheless the opportunity to 
make the new instrument serve as a genuine medium 
of progress, and for the very existence of the League 
we have the President to thank. The League might 
be far better, but no governmental device is proof 
against folly or inertia. The success of the League 
of Nations will be inseparable from the success of 
home governments in the great powers. The de- 


From Wilson to the Future 251 


pendence of the League of Nations for its success 
on enlightened government in the constituent 
powers was clearly in Mr. Wilson’s mind when he 
signed the treaty. He paced the floor at night, op- 
pressed with the weight of his responsibility, before 
he decided to remain and sign. What he did was 
to make a sacrifice, a heavy sacrifice, for the possi- 
bility of codperation and orderly growth. He has 
said that it is a good treaty, and in the heat of 
speeches he has over-defended it in detail. It is 
good only in this broad sense that the League of 
Nations is an inseparable part of the treaty. Ad- 
mitting that the President has defended too vehe- 
mently separate clauses of it, | am not going to stop, 
in the midst of colossal considerations, to weigh 
with nicety and exactment campaign arguments de- 
livered by a man who on the whole goes so far 
toward saying precisely and consistently what he 
means. However stupid, hypocritical, even de- 
structive, are many of the items of the peace, yet 
I say that when Mr. Wilson induced M. Clemen- 
ceau, with his earlier jeers at the League, to place 
the safety of France in the League instead of in the 
terms advised by Marshal Foch, the President won 
one of the victories of all time. In that sense he 
won the peace as he had won the war; and these 
big moral forces have been lessened by disappoint- 
ments, but not killed. Knowing as we do how close 


252 The Advancing Hour 


to victory Germany came, can we doubt that a de- 
cisive influence rested in Mr. Wilson’s much-ridi- 
culed notes, undermining German war-feeling, re- 
assuring hesitating labor in England and France, 
and preparing American opinion for the great ef- 
forts of 1917 and 1918? Is there any more reason 
to doubt that in introducing a moral ideal of victory 
to millions of people he has made a contribution 
that can never end, but if democracy is successful, 
must be one great step in a continuous progress? 
The one large criticism of him is just but out of 
proportion. When people emphasize the fact of 
the President’s inability to consult and coéperate in 
certain ways, they do not nearly as well understand 
that if ideas and facts are put to him briefly, intelli- 
gently, and non-controversially there are few men 
anywhere who absorb them with more rapidity. A 
leading characteristic is always the extraordinary 
rapidity with which he understands, and men fre- 
quently imagine they have not had a full hearing 
because the President does not want to hear them 
go on saying the same things over again. We should 
never forget the good side of this aloofness, of this 
tendency to let the matter rest between himself and 
God. The first hour that he was actually in office, 
on the morning of March 5, 1912, he was talking 
with a friend about the wonderfully high grade of 
work reached by Thomas Jefferson in contrasting 


From Wilson to the Future 2538 


lines, including architecture and building. Such 
fineness and excellence of work, the President held, 
is almost impossible in our day, with the telephone, 
the newspaper, and the thousand callers. “But one 
thing the people can count on me for,” he said. “I 
shall not allow my strength to be dissipated; I shall 
keep the best that is in me free for the important 
things.” 

When all is weighed, and perspective is kept, and 
contemporary bitterness is ignored, that spiritual 
devotion, far-reaching intelligence, and insistent 
will, concentrated always on improvement, will be 
seen as the foundations of Wilson’s greatness. His- 
tory cannot be written yet, and I am not free to dis- 
cuss just how close to being left out of the treaty 
the League of Nations Covenant actually was, but 
this may be said: that if the League of Nations 
turns out to be a success, and thereby the nations of 
the earth are saved from again attempting modern 
expert suicide, the salvation will belong beyond all 
others to Woodrow Wilson. By prolonged exposi- 
tion, against endless ridicule, he prepared us for it; 
by will and through sacrifice he forced it on Paris; 
and destiny leaves the outcome with the public opin- 
ion of the great nations; above all, with the public 
opinion of Great Britain and the United States. 


CHAPTER XI 
WHAT IS OUR FAITH? 


“A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of 
the things which he possesseth.” St. Luke. 


“The trouble with democracy 1s that we demo- 
crats do not wish to pay the price: education, educa- 
tion, education: education not in books but in public 
affairs; education that is current and persistent.” 

Mr. Justice Brandeis. 


“The treasures of heaven are... realities of in- 
tellect.... The modern church crucifies Christ 
with the head downwards.” Blake. 


HE future faced to-day cannot be solved by 

old affirmations, nor can it be solved with- 

out destruction of what is selfish in our 
creeds. Authority is invalid until it has run the 
gantlet of our questions. We have no faith that 
is sufficient for life unless our minds are open to the 
need of things that are not. Our age, product of 
steam and roller press and cinematograph, scarcely 
a century old, has still to stabilize itself and fix its 
values: and much must be destroyed before the 


moral and intellectual cathedrals of the post-Dar- 
254 


What is Our Faith? 255 


win age can arise. Such genius as took place in 
the Greece of Phidias, the Italy of Lorenzo, the 
France of the nameless builders of Notre Dame, 
the England of Elizabeth, or around the lake of 
Galilee, are determined by circumstance beyond our 
guess. The steps ahead that we can control are in 
the spirit of man, the nobility of custom, the worth 
of life. Our task is not to be inspired but to dig 
the channels worthiest of inspiration. 

I have tried to show that the world-war filled the 
nations with new lies, as did also the period of dis- 
order that immediately followed. If we look ahead 
now, into the future, with no other will than to see 
what we may of the white light of truth, in what 
direction are we beckoned by our chastened hopes? 

We can reach the direction only by putting away 
the superstitions by which we protect our interests 
and our baser passions. No doubt the pioneer has 
a rugged time. He meets a world filled with fear 
of thought, lest thought change interests and posses- 
sions. ‘This is always true, but in war it is still more 
true, through sanctified wrath, and the hushing of 
inquiry, while vehement assertion flourishes. From 
1914 to 1920 whole nations were propagandized into 
mental slavery, Americans not least. To remain in 
these years true to the beliefs of the years preceding 
was often to remain apart. Few indeed kept toler- 


256 The Advancing Hour 


ance; few sided with Jesus against the gentlemen 
eager to throw stones. 


Jesus was sitting in Moses’ chair, 

They brought the trembling woman there. 
Moses commands she be stoned to death, 
What was the sound of Jesus’ breath? 
He laid his hand on Moses’ law; 

The ancient heavens, in silent awe, 

Writ with Curses from Pole to Pole, 

All away began to roll. 


Why are the Ten Commandments more popular 
than the Sermon on the Mount? In church we 
cite both, but actually we put some emotion into the 
tenets of Moses, while in practice we detest those 
of Jesus. The reason is not hidden. The Ten Com- 
mandments are a defense of power and possession. 
First, the ruling God is not to be interfered with, 
else will he take vengeance. Secondly, the prop- 
erty of a mortal, including his man-servant and his 
maid-servant, are not to be stolen. 

Heine quotes a description of feasting gods. 
Then goes on: 

“Then suddenly approached, panting, a pale Jew, 
with drops of blood on his brow, with a crown of 
thorns on his head, and a great cross laid on his 
shoulders; and he threw the cross on the high table 
of the gods, so that the golden cups tottered, and 
the gods became dumb and pale, and grew even 
paler, till they at last melted away into vapor.” 

Moses codified the defense of established institu- 
tions. It is easy to read with sympathy laws against 


What is Our Faith? 257 


malefactors. Jesus asked us to do something more 
difficult. Instead of fixing angry attention on un- 
fortunates who are tempted to go against prohibi- 
tions, He requested us to make virtue positive, 
which involves sacrifice and which therefore we 
prefer to take not too seriously. ‘The Sermon on the 
Mount invites us to live according to the spirit of 
Christ, asking little for ourselves, our hearts with 
those whose needs surpass our own. The few sen- 
tences that have come down to us from that sermon 
indicate that it must have been the noblest picture 
ever drawn of a life in which freedom means free- 
dom to be true. 

I do not imply that the form in which the spirit- 
ual life was pictured for Galilee can be applied to 
our conditions. If we had the spirit, however, the 
letter would come. Tolstoy lived in a land of 
peasants; he did not work out the machinery by 
which the gospel could be successfully applied; but 
he did the essential. He made Christian ethics 
throb. Since steam, the machine, and capital have 
ruled, no such force as Tolstoy has appealed to our 
youth. He had vision and he had courage, the two 
things required. He welcomed sorrow, and pitied 
the satisfied and pampered philistine. For decades 
he taught the gospel with genius, and at the end he 
closed the compromises of life by marching off, at 
82, to die like a crusader, leaving unfinished “the 


258 The Advancing Hour 


Light that shines through Darkness,” that harassing 
picture of reform. We lesser spirits, by liberation 
of our minds, can find the methods of wedding mod- 
ern forms and ancient truths, if only we care. But 
we cannot find the way without the will. We must 
in our own modern way be born again, in the sense 
that we must drop luxury and fear as the motives 
of our effort. No more than in Bunyan’s time can 
the pilgrim proceed without leaving behind him 
things dear to him. We are lacking in great men. 
Requiring religious fervor to brace us for the exac- 
tions of a new faith we Americans especially find 
ourselves without our prophets. In the main our 
ablest men are not serious about what the spirit 
needs. Ambition rules. Our minds do not find 
their dreams in what we can give but in what we 
can get. We dream of promotion, applause, power, 
of having an automobile, because our neighbor has 
one. It is those who do not worry about the ma- 
terial scale on which they live, but who are devoted 
to some idea or affection, who can make the coming 
shift of power a healthy advance instead of a war. 
I miss in America the spectacle of many persons, 
gifted and prominent, who nevertheless live by 
choice with frugality, calm, and independence, and 
I find too many who measure the value of life by 
conspicuousness and pomp. In preceding chapters 
I have indicated channels that may lead, without 


What is Our Faith? 259 


paroxysms, toward a life containing some religion 
in action; but those steps cannot be taken with suc- 
cess unless a change of heart comes, so that fears 
and hopes cease to be centered on clogging require- 
ments. If the words of Jesus cannot give us the 
mechanical details by which we can pass to a more 
generous age, they can point the way; and when He 
speaks of the eye of a needle He should not be taken 
as calling by the name of rich only vast proprietors, 
but rather all of us who are capitalists, and use our 
capital selfishly, and dream of ever more capital. 
The man who votes against a heavier inheritance 
tax, or for indirect taxes on necessities, in order to 
protect his privileges, or confines his dreams to his 
material advance and successful competition, surely 
comes within the principle that Jesus was consider- 
ing. So great a revolution of the spirit would be 
long in the making even if most of the clergy were 
working to inspire it; if most of the lawyers were 
concentrating their minds on how to help it func- 
tion. Arthur Henderson spoke accurately when he 
said: ‘A backward glance at the history of the 
19th century will show that the people have been 
steadily extending the range of their influence in 
politics and affairs, without any very clear notion of 
what they were doing or how the final steps in the 
conquest of political power by organized democracy 
were to be surmounted.” To help the mass to sur- 


260 The Advancing Hour 


mount those steps intelligently and to help the pos- 
sessing classes to share their power, not forced by 
disaster but beckoned by faith, is the worthiest life 
that any of us can live. Is it not thrilling to live in 
a world-revolutionr The call is not as obviously 
strong as in certain other epochs: perhaps, indeed, 
the call to the truest faith and the steadiest inde- 
pendence has never been melodramatic. I suppose 
the worth of a lifetime in which we seek only an 
intelligent and busy life for ourselves, our wives, 
and our children, and dream our dreams freed from 
wordly rubbish, cannot possibly come to the ma- 
jority until our system of education can be changed. 
It could not possibly be changed under a capital- 
istic system entirely unmitigated, though it could 
flourish under a combination of reduced capitalism, 
highly developed coédperation of many kinds, and 
national. functions, better than it could under any 
bureaucratic system of socialism or communism. 
The changes, however, in order to usher in a better 
order than our own, must not be undertaken as 
tricks in defense of blatant competition. Such low 
arguments as that man will not make effort except 
in the service of the self-indulgent and autocratic 
parts of his nature must be abandoned. We all 
know they are false and they are put forward mere- 
ly as defenses by those who wish to clothe their 
golden calf in pleasant raiment. Usually when I 


What is Our Faith? 261 


have written for the conservative classes, urging 
acquiescence and help in the‘social revolution, I 
have done it on the ground that if they did not help 
the movement they and their children would be the 
sufferers; but I have been at heart sorry to appeal 
to fear. To avoid chaos and hate and suffering at 
some date not so incredibly distant, even in Amer- 
ica, is, to be sure, a sound and sufficient reason for 
dealing creatively with our problem; but our spirit 
would be more satisfied if we could appeal merely 
to love and faith; not to fear but to a universal hope. 
When our school books are rewritten, when thou- 
sands of newspapers and periodicals are owned by 
groups that use the power of the press for other 
purposes than money-making, when no man is hon- 
ored because he wastes more than his fellows, when 
the great material needs of life, that are limited in 
amount, are in the hands of the community, when 
the great mass of ordinary business is in one form 
or another codperative, then shall we be able to 
_ guide the flood of human thought and purpose away 
from personal ambition and fear. Then may they 
be guided to what the best of men’s teachers have 
always preached, to a life in which sympathy and 
reason are the master-motives. It cannot be said 
that such a life has heretofore failed, for it has 
never been tried. Individuals have lived it, but 
organized society has never made the effort. For 


262 The Advancing Hour 


the first time since the world began we have the 
natural and technical resources. Therefore such a 
life is more possible to-day than ever in the past, 
granted the will; granted a will so strong and moral 
as to be rightly called religious. 


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